


How To Care For Your Resident

by Pic_Akai



Category: The Good Doctor (TV 2017)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-30
Updated: 2019-03-10
Packaged: 2019-09-30 06:26:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 20,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17218673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pic_Akai/pseuds/Pic_Akai
Summary: Neil understands that his residents need to ensure their basic needs are taken care of before they can give their best to him. He just didn’t expect that taking care of Shaun’s basic needs would become his responsibility…nor that he would be so happy about that.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic assumes knowledge of and may contain spoilers for all of season one. It’s a work in progress for which I have planned to the end, but I’m out of the habit of chaptered fics and it’s been a long while since I’ve posted a WIP so there is a small chance of it not being finished (you have been warned). I apologise for any and all medical and general hospital-related inaccuracies. If you notice any, please let me know.

It’s almost twenty after three in the morning when Neil finally finishes the day’s paperwork and allows himself to go home and get some rest. He feels dead on his feet, zones out whilst making his way through the hospital, but he can’t help but notice the familiar figure of his most challenging resident sitting out front by the bus stop. “Murphy.” Shaun looks at him, but doesn’t speak. “What are you still doing here?”

“I’m waiting for the bus.” Shaun turns his head back toward the stop, as if he would miss the bus if he weren’t looking straight ahead.

Neil sighs quietly. “I mean, why are you only going home now? Everyone else left hours ago.”

“I had to be sure Ms Wachita wasn’t going to develop sepsis.”

Neil feels like he’s missed a step in the conversation. It’s a familiar feeling with Shaun, but it hasn’t gotten any more comfortable yet. “Why would she develop sepsis? The surgery went perfectly and there was no indication of sepsis beforehand.”

“There is an increased risk of five to ten per cent of post-operative-”

“Yeah, okay,” Neil cuts in, already regretting starting any conversation past, ‘Goodnight, Shaun.’ “But there’s nothing about her specifically that suggests that risk is higher. Plus if she does develop sepsis, the nurses will identify it and let us know if we’re needed. We don’t have to monitor her.”

“She’s our patient,” Shaun says.

Neil opens his mouth, thinks better of it, shakes his head. “Do you want a ride home?” he asks, because Shaun might not understand social norms but he does. He doesn’t know exactly where Shaun lives but he knows it’s not far out of his way.

“In your car?” Shaun asks, looking at him again for only the second time in the conversation.

“Yes, in my car,” Neil replies, smiling despite not knowing why.

“Yes please,” Shaun says, standing and grabbing his bag.

The ride home is quiet. Neil has a headache anyway, so he’s okay with that. He thinks a couple of times about saying something, just because silence is unnerving, but then he realises speaking means Shaun will answer and they’ll probably end up in another frustrating conversation where he has to spell everything out. So he concentrates on the lights and the signs and says nothing until, “Which way?” and then follows Shaun’s directions, which are at least as good as his descriptions of medical matters.

He realises dimly that the directions are getting quieter, but it doesn’t properly register until he pulls up outside of Shaun’s building and Shaun releases his seatbelt, grabs his bag and yanks open the door in under a second, before jettisoning himself out of the car to take two steps and promptly vomit onto a bush. Technically, Neil supposes, as he tries to make sense of this, Shaun’s partly vomited _into_ the bush.

He still is, as Neil turns the engine off and gets out himself. “Shaun?” he says, hovering a step or so behind, not expecting an answer. He doesn’t get one. “Are you okay?” He knows it’s a stupid question even as it leaves his mouth, but in his defence it’s almost four in the morning.

“I-” Shaun begins, and then stops to throw up again. Mostly now it’s just retching, the contents of his stomach having been almost entirely forcefully emptied. “I do not feel good.”

“Hmm, shocker,” Neil says. He glances longingly back at his car, then defeatedly moves to close the passenger door and locks it. “Come on.” He takes a step toward the entrance, but realises Shaun isn’t moving. “Do you think you’re gonna chuck again or can you hold it in until you get to the bathroom?”

Shaun’s chest and stomach contract slightly in response, but he doesn’t spill again. “Where are you going?”

Neil raises his eyes to the heavens briefly. “To make sure you get in okay.”

“But I can-”

“Murphy,” Neil says, losing his patience. “For once stop asking and just go with it. Come on. Lead the way.”

Shaun hovers in place, looking uncertain. Then thankfully self-preservation seems to kick in because he follows directions and walks past Neil toward the main door.

They don’t speak and Shaun doesn’t turn back until he’s two steps away from his apartment door, when he twists violently and Neil jumps back out of instinct, thus missing the small pool of what’s probably bile hitting his shoes. The hallway carpet, not having the ability to spontaneously move, isn’t so lucky.

“Oh no,” Shaun moans, his fingers twisting. He looks pale. “I threw up on the carpet. I have to clean it.”

“Open your door,” Neil tells him, and then when he does, Neil adds, “You need to go to bed. Maybe with a bucket.”

“No, I need to clean the hallway,” Shaun says. Neil follows him as he stumbles into what turns out to be his bathroom. Shaun stumbles a lot, especially when he’s worked up, but Neil figures his co-ordination probably isn’t helped by the vomiting episode and whatever’s caused it.

Neil blocks the doorway of the bathroom with his arm as Shaun turns round, bottles of cleaner and a cloth in hand, and Shaun comes within millimetres of bouncing off him. “I… need to clean the hallway. Excuse me,” says Shaun.

“No, you need to go to bed,” Neil says, exaggerating patience he doesn’t feel. Okay, maybe he feels a little bit. The kid’s got to feel like crap right now but in this situation at least, he is being public-spirited. He continues as Shaun opens his mouth, “I will clean the hallway. You go to bed.”

“You didn’t throw up in it,” Shaun counters, glancing at him then away. He’s still hovering but thankfully doesn’t try to rush Neil, who’s not sure he’d have the energy to stop him.

Neil grabs the cleaning supplies while Shaun isn’t looking, surprising him enough that he lets go. “Yep, and that’s why I should clean it. Wash your mouth out, grab a bucket, go to bed. I will clean the hallway.”

“I need to brush my teeth,” he hears Shaun reply as he returns to the small wet patch of carpet.

“Sure,” he says, kneeling down, and wondering how the hell he ended up here.

Once he’s done as good of a job as he’s going to do at past four am – nobody’s going to catch whatever Shaun has, which is good enough for him – he rinses the cloth in Shaun’s kitchen sink and hangs it next to a towel to dry. Then he envisages Shaun finding it and freaking out because it’s been next to his towel, and looks around blankly for a few seconds before deciding to toss it over the shower door.

He follows the sound of a gentle buzzing, which turns out to be a fan in the main room, directed into a corner. Neil stops himself before he asks why. “You good?” he asks Shaun, who’s sitting up on his mattress cross-legged but at least under the blankets, and has changed out of his shirt and trousers, the latter neatly folded on top of a chest of drawers.

“I am unwell. I suspect a viral infection,” Shaun replies.

Neil chooses his next words very carefully. “You think you’ll die in the night?”

“That seems unlikely.”

“Great,” Neil says, slapping the dining table. “In that case, see ya.”

He turns and leaves, just catching Shaun’s hesitant, “See ya,” as he shuts the apartment door.

* * * * *

It makes no sense that one of the first things Neil thinks about when he wakes up the next morning (just about) is if Shaun’s feeling any better. It makes even less sense when, three hours later, he texts him to ask that. Although, in his defence, Shaun’s record at calling in sick despite not showing up isn’t exactly stellar, so it makes sense for him to be one step ahead of the game if Shaun’s not going to be in tomorrow. He feels vindicated when Shaun doesn’t even bother to reply. He also feels annoyed.

* * * * *

Shaun hears his phone beep around three pm, indicating a new text message. He’s watching his show, so he doesn’t read it until four. The message is from Dr Melendez, and it reads: _You feeling any better?_

Shaun doesn’t know what the comparison is supposed to be, what he might be feeling better than. He contemplates briefly texting back to get clarification, but Dr Melendez doesn’t tend to like it when he answers a question with a question, which is a lot of the time. So instead he puts his phone down and picks up his book.

* * * * *

“Shaun. I take it you’ve stopped vomiting?” is Dr Melendez’s greeting the next day.

“I am not currently vomiting,” Shaun answers, as Jared and Claire exchange smiles. As usual, Shaun notices but he doesn’t know why they’re doing it.

“Always good to hear in a hospital,” Jared says, and Dr Melendez launches into their work for the day.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic is now subtitled 'Neil Melendez sighs a lot'.
> 
> Thank you for all the comments and kudos! Glad to know there are people interested in this. I'm having fun with it. This chapter is rather a lot longer, but future chapter lengths are likely to be erratic.
> 
> Side note: Shaun's actions and reactions in this chapter/fic are representative of someone with autism...but not everyone with autism. What hurts and what helps is very much individual.

Shaun’s in Dr Andrews’ office a couple weeks later. He hasn’t vomited since the day after he vomited in the hallway and Dr Melendez cleaned it up, but he doesn’t feel good today. He doesn’t feel good a lot of times but this is an especially not good time.

“You need to convince Mr Roper to undergo this surgery,” Dr Andrews is telling him, hands on hips, standing in front of his desk. The sun is shining bright behind him, casting him in stark silhouette. Shaun can’t see the detail on his face even when he looks straight at him, but he knows he’s angry. Anger is an easy emotion to recognise, unless people are trying to hide it. Shaun saw it a lot at home.

“Dr Melendez told me to let him make his own decision,” Shaun says.

“I don’t give a damn!” says Dr Andrews. “His decision should be to let us go ahead. You can give him your medical opinion that that is what’s best for him.”

Shaun is confused. “But my medical opinion isn’t-”

“Your medical opinion is irrelevant,” Dr Andrews cuts across him, confusing him further. “Convince him to sign.”

“How do I-”

“Damn it, Murphy, I don’t care how! But you do it or you’ll be doing nothing more than suction for the rest of your residency.”

Shaun tries to work out what to do next to make this less confusing.

“Go!” Andrews says.

He goes.

He goes back to Dr Melendez and the rest of the team.

“-left it in the cavity, because-”

“Dr Andrews told me I have to convince the patient to have the surgery,” Shaun says, interrupting Dr Melendez.

Dr Melendez folds his arms. “And I told you, it’s the patient’s decision. So go let him make one.”

“He told me if I don’t get him to sign that I’ll only do suction for the rest of my residency.”

Claire’s eyes widen. “He can’t make that decision, Shaun.”

“No, I can,” Dr Melendez says. “Look, I already told you what to do. Go to Mr Roper, set out the facts, tell me what he says.”

Shaun is finding it hard to find his words. “But I can’t-”

“I’ve told you what to do. Go!”

He goes.

Shaun can’t figure out what he needs to tell the patient, but the thing both of them have told him to do is to go see the patient, so he does. Mr Roper is half-sitting in a bed in the E.R., his wife and adult daughter in chairs alongside. As Shaun enters they both stand up, and he takes a half-step backwards. There isn’t much room to move in the cubicle.

“What’s-” Mr Roper starts to speak at the same time as his daughter says something else, so Shaun hears neither of them.

“The…President of the hospital says you have to undergo the surgery,” Shaun says. “But the attending surgeon says it is your decision and you need to know the facts.” He lays out the facts.

Or at least, he starts to, because he’s halfway through explaining sphincter of Oddi dysfunction when Mr Roper’s daughter interrupts him. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Shaun has to think for a few seconds to recollect his train of thought. “I am explaining the potential complications and side effects of the surgery.”

“But you said before that the President says I have to have it and the surgeon doesn’t agree? What the hell?”

“The President of the hospital. The President doesn’t have an opinion on your surgery that I am aware of.”

“No shit!” Mr Roper says loudly. He’s not hiding his anger. Shaun has no idea why he’s angry. He doesn’t have a diagnosis of emotional dysregulation disorder, nor is it a symptom of his current condition. Claire reminds him frequently that people get upset when they’re sick, but it doesn’t usually happen when they know there’s a treatment.

“As I was saying, sphincter of Oddi-”

“What are we supposed to do?” Mr Roper’s daughter interrupts him again.

“You’re…not supposed to do anything. I am supposed to give you the facts and tell you to sign the consent form but also that it’s your decision.”

“That doesn’t make any sense, you imbecile!” Mr Roper yells, and then his daughter yells, and that’s when Shaun stops processing words.

It’s difficult to say what happens next, because he doesn’t process all of that, either; he leaves the E.R., at some speed, he sees Park who stops and stares at him, he maybe accidentally barges into a nurse, the lights are too bright and he tugs at his hair and then he’s in O.R. two, because O.R. one was occupied, and then he’s sitting in the corner holding his knees and rocking and he knows he’s talking but he doesn’t know what he’s saying. It’s really hard to breathe, or to feel like he’s breathing; he knows he’s breathing because he’s still very conscious but it doesn’t feel right.

Somebody in scrubs comes into sight abruptly, leaning down in front of him. He shuts his eyes. They touch him on the knee and he jerks away to the side. He opens his eyes without meaning to; they’re still there, talking to him but he can’t understand them. But it’s still noise so his hands move down from the top of his head to cover his ears, and he curls up as tight as he can get. They touch him again; he rolls sideways and drags his white coat over himself, as much as he can cover and he really hopes they go away and possibly he tells them that, because then they do. Or at least, they stop talking at him and touching him.

* * * * *

One of the most interesting consultations Neil’s had this week is interrupted by a knock at the door. A nurse he doesn’t know yet sticks her head in when he bids entry. “Uh, Dr Melendez? Your – Dr Murphy has just gone into O.R. two. He’s sitting in the corner and he won’t come out.”

Neil frowns. “We’re not due in the O.R..”

“Yeah…he didn’t scrub in either.”

“He just walked in there?” A glance at his other residents tells him they’re as shocked to hear this as he is. Shaun ignores a lot of social rules, sure, mainly due to not knowing them, but he obeys medical rules to the letter. He can learn those by textbook, and he has.

“Did he say why?” Claire asks the nurse.

She shakes her head. “He’s not making any sense.”

Neil sighs heavily.

“I’ll go talk to him,” Claire says, but he stops her with a hand on the shoulder.

“No, I’ll go,” he says. She opens her mouth to protest, but wisely shuts it again. “Reznick, take over.” Morgan practically bounces out of her seat to grab the pen from his hand. He ignores Claire’s eye roll; at least this way some work will get done while he’s gone rather than them spending the time dissecting Shaun.

His main reason for going himself rather than letting Claire is because he wants to know what the hell Shaun is up to. It’s a toss up between lunacy and brilliance, and the fact that he doesn’t know irritates him. He also has a nasty suspicion it has to do with his orders not fifteen minutes ago, and it’ll be quicker to work out just exactly what he has to chew Shaun out about if he gets the lowdown from him directly.

A technician is standing outside O.R. two. “He still in there?” Neil greets her.

She nods. He sighs. “I’ll scrub in.”

“You might as well not bother,” she replies. “The room’s already gonna need a full clean.”

Neil knows nobody will be thanking Shaun for that. He nods and heads in.

He knows immediately that this isn’t about brilliance, because Shaun is curled on the floor on his side, pulling at his own hair and muttering a constant stream of words which occasionally rise and fall in volume. Neil stops moving, trying to work out what’s happening. After a few seconds, he registers the words: “You have to make him sign…you can’t make him sign…you have to make him sign…you can’t make him sign…”

Shaun’s face is screwed up in what looks like agony, as is his body, as if he’s suffering terrible gastrointestinal pain. But this is not the stomach flu. Shaun handled the stomach flu just fine. He’s not handling this.

“Dr Murphy?” Neil realises just after he’s spoken that it was too loud; it meant Shaun definitely heard him over his own words, but there’s no other competing sound in here and Shaun immediately claps both hands to his ears, emitting a low moan before going right back into his monologue.

Neil realises, very suddenly, that Shaun isn’t having a breakdown – as it first appeared – but a meltdown. He remembers very little about what that means, except that it happens to autistic kids – adults, he guesses, as well – when they get overwhelmed. Shaun is the very picture of overwhelmed, and Neil also realises that he’s one of the people who contributed to that. He shoves any further thoughts or feelings about that aside for the moment.

He creeps forward a couple of steps and crouches down in front of his resident. “Shaun?” he tries again, much quieter, but Shaun only moans again and shakes his head violently, as if trying to get rid of the memory of the sound, like it would fall out of his ears. Neil’s at a loss. He considers going to get Claire, who he’s sure would be much better suited to helping Shaun at a time like this – hell, even the scrub tech outside could probably do a better job – but at the same time he feels it wouldn’t be right to leave Shaun this way, even if his presence isn’t doing him any good. Shaun’s obviously stuck inside his own head; leaving his body alone as well isn’t right.

He thinks for a moment. Talking to him isn’t helping; it’s actively making things worse. He knows Shaun doesn’t like to be touched, but Shaun’s eyes are screwed shut so he can’t get his attention that way, and short of shoving an ammonia capsule under his nose, he doesn’t appear to have any other options.

Neil reaches out a hand to touch Shaun on the shoulder, then stops just before he makes contact, envisaging the smack he might well get in response. He got more than his fair share as a medical student and as a resident before an attending finally took pity on him and explained, with their next psychotic patient as an aide, that it’s better for everyone if you use restraint pre-emptively rather than trying to grab hold of a flailing octopus you’ve just poked with a stick. It was a colourful metaphor, and it worked; he recalled the advice and as much as he dislikes putting his hands on people in that way (cutting into them, of course, still being absolutely fine) it has saved him from some potentially nasty accidents since.

Shaun’s not psychotic (Neil knows that now). But he’s not rational, which is entirely at odds with his usual state of being. So instead of a comforting hand on the shoulder, Neil moves to angle himself away from Shaun’s legs and then grabs both of his forearms firmly, bracing himself in case Shaun pushes or pulls.

The effect is immediate; Shaun opens his eyes, wide, clearly doesn’t take in what he’s seeing, and tries to pull away as he sits up. But Neil holds on as he lets him adjust his position, figuring maybe Shaun needs a few seconds to see what’s actually happening. He’s sweaty, hair stuck to his forehead, and red in the face. And then – Neil wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t been here – Shaun’s gaze drops to where he’s being held, and he breathes hard a few times – he’s stopped talking – and then his breathing starts to slow down. He doesn’t try to pull away again. He stares at Neil’s hands on his arms, and he breathes, then he closes his eyes again. He still looks pained, but nothing like before.

Neil lets out a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding, and lets go. Before he can gather any thoughts about how to talk about this, Shaun starts moaning, his hands fly back up to his head, he starts rocking back and forth, and Neil acts without thinking and grabs him again. This time, he realises soon, it’s tighter, but Shaun really doesn’t seem to mind.

Neil loses track of how long they sit there; him holding the forearms of his most frustrating and most excellent resident like he’s berating a child but frozen in place – as Neil recalls, there was shaking involved when he used to be in Shaun’s position – and his resident breathing ever more normally as each moment passes. He sees the tension leave Shaun’s body bit by bit and after a while he considers he might actually just be holding Shaun in place from sliding back onto the floor.

When Shaun finally speaks again, saying, “You can let go now,” in a quiet, scratchy voice, Neil starts. He still doesn’t let go immediately; he does so gradually, aware of what happened the last time. Thankfully, Shaun just reaches up to run sweaty hands through sweaty hair, and stares at the floor. He looks exhausted and Neil thinks he’s feeling a bit of that himself.

“I must speak to Mr Roper-” Shaun starts.

Neil responds before he can even move. “No. No, Shaun. I’ll talk to him.”

“But Dr Andrews-”

“Said to get him to sign, so I will get him to sign.” He knows he needs to head this off before Shaun collapses into his own mind again.

“He said I had to convince him. _I_ have to convince him,” Shaun says, pushing himself up from the floor faster than Neil can react. However, when Neil responds, getting up himself and _again_ grabbing Shaun by the forearm, Shaun stops.

Neil looks him in the eye. For a split second at least, before Shaun looks away. “You can convince him by using me to do it. Andrews didn’t say anything about that.” He wasn’t there, but he’s guessing. “Did you get him to sign before?”

Shaun shakes his head. “Then you going back probably won’t work, so I will go.” Shaun doesn’t need to know he’s intending to speak to Mr Roper _after_ a conversation with Dr Andrews about medical ethics and the principle of consent. “You need to go home.”

“I still have…” Shaun’s gaze tracks over the clock on the wall behind Neil’s head, “Four hours and seven minutes of my shift left.”

“I am issuing you a direct order to go home, now. You can make up the time next week.” He doesn’t actually give a damn if Shaun makes up the time – they all work far more hours than they’re actually scheduled to, due to the nature of the job – but he knows Shaun needs to feel like he’s not cheating the hospital out of anything, even if that’s ludicrous.

Shaun considers this, then eventually – thankfully – nods twice sharply. “Good,” says Neil. “Go. Now.”

Shaun goes.

* * * * *

By the end of Neil’s shift, he feels like he’s been pulling the weight of not just himself and Shaun, but of the whole surgical department. It’s not because of the hospital, though, for once. His own thoughts are infinitely more exhausting.

He thinks about how it must have looked when Shaun came out, sweaty and red and loping determinedly towards the elevator he would have taken to go get his bag, not letting anyone stop him following a direct order. And then how it looked when Neil himself came out, already angry with Andrews before the conversation started. And, if he’s honest, a little angry with himself. The tech had still been outside, evidently waiting to be able to re-clean the O.R., and even though he only glanced at her he saw how she looked a little disturbed. He realises the only reason nobody came to interrupt them and tell them to get the hell out of there was because they must have thought he was really tearing Shaun a new one. He doesn’t honestly care if they think he did, or that he would, except for some reason he cares that they would think Shaun deserved it. Yes, he broke scrub, yes, he walked out on a patient…but somehow Neil doesn’t think any of that is really his fault.

The thing is, he needs to address this, because while restraining Shaun got him through the crisis it didn’t actually explain what happened (although Neil has a fairly good idea of some of the contributing factors) and it doesn’t exactly provide them with a helpful template of how to deal with a similar situation in the future. And truthfully, he is worried about Shaun: not about how his autism means he deals with patients, but about him in himself.

In between consults, rounds and mind-numbing paperwork to prove the others happened, he considers who would be best to speak to. Ideally he’d go to Glassman with this, except Glassman isn’t around at the moment, in theory receiving treatment and resting in between, and Neil can just imagine how restful this conversation would be, for either of them. He _should_ be speaking to Andrews, since with the head of surgery still a vacant post, the President (who used to be the head of surgery) is the next logical superior to report a concern about a colleague to. Except he knows for certain that even if Andrews didn’t document anything (and he would), just the conversation would be a permanent black mark on Shaun’s record. Warning: this doctor occasionally goes loco and potentially puts patients at risk. Neil knows Shaun didn’t really put anyone at risk, even if he did contaminate the O.R., since there was no one in there – the worst he did was cause some extra work and stress for the techs – but Andrews will leap from ‘Shaun rushes into an empty O.R.’ to ‘Shaun will rush into an occupied O.R.’ without pause for thought, because he doesn’t know Shaun, and doesn’t care to. Neil is fairly sure that Shaun ended up there instead of any other unoccupied room in the hospital because a) Dr Glassman’s office is no longer his and b) the O.R. is a place where Shaun is, almost without exception, flawless. When Neil thinks about it, he realises _he_ likes the room because it’s the place he most often feels good about himself, and his self-esteem is magnitudes higher than Shaun’s, so the effect is probably ten times higher for someone who tends to screw up a lot in most every other area of the hospital. Regardless, Neil is pretty certain that a room already full of people is not where Shaun would go if he felt overwhelmed.

The only person other than Glassman he can think of who would be able to give some useful advice is Claire. She gets Shaun in a way he doesn’t, although he’s come a long way since they first met. But the idea of it, talking about one of his residents to another behind their back, feels wrong and unfair. Shaun’s not a problem to be solved, he’s a member of the team, and he deserves to be treated the same. Or rather, Neil considers, he deserves to be treated equally, which doesn’t necessarily mean the same thing.

Having therefore exhausted all other options, several days later, the person who he asks to come talk to him about Shaun is Shaun.

When his other residents have been dispatched to complete suitably time-consuming yet not too demanding tasks, Neil takes a few seconds to assess Shaun before he begins. He doesn’t want to trigger Shaun into a repeat performance. However, since Shaun appears only his normal level of anxious-yet-eager, Neil gets to the point. He finds it’s quicker with Shaun.

“The other day in the O.R.,” he says. “What happened to you?”

“Which day in particular?”

Neil sighs and knows Shaun isn’t being deliberately obtuse. “Thursday. You broke scrub and lay on the floor.” Neil avoids the more embarrassing details.

Shaun doesn’t. “And then you came and held my arms and told me to go home.”

“…yeah. Skipping a lot of important parts, but yeah.”

“I will make up my hours tomorrow. Tomorrow is Monday which is next week and you told me to make them up next week.” Shaun turns as if to leave, apparently because he thinks that’s what this conversation is about.

“No, Shaun,” Neil says, and his resident turns back. “I don’t care about your hours. You didn’t answer my question. What happened to you?”

Shaun gazes out of the window. Neil waits for the detailed and specific explanation Shaun gives when he’s asked a medical question. He’s disappointed. “I…don’t know.”

“That was a meltdown, right?”

“I don’t know,” Shaun repeats. “I have heard of them but I don’t know if I have them.”

“I’m pretty sure you do, and you did,” says Neil, distinctly unimpressed with Shaun’s lack of self-awareness. Even he, with barely half a class covering autism many moons ago, knew that was a meltdown. He’s even surer since doing a bit of googling after the fact. “Has that happened before?”

Shaun nods. “It happens sometimes.” Neil is about to continue until Shaun surprises him with, “Thank you for making it better.”

“Uh…no problem.” He guesses that’s sort of what they’re here to talk about. “What did I do to make it better?”

“I don’t know,” Shaun says promptly, and Neil is glad his resident isn’t looking at him with the face he pulls inadvertently. “But you helped. It usually takes a lot longer and I didn’t feel so bad afterwards this time.”

Neil nods slowly. “Do you know how we can stop it happening again?”

“No,” Shaun shakes his head. “But if you find out I would very much like to know.”

The conversation leaves Neil with more questions than answers. Nevertheless, he feels a bit better after they’ve had it. And Shaun – well, he can’t tell if Shaun feels better, but he at least doesn’t look like he feels worse, so Neil’s going to count that as a win.


	3. Chapter 3

“So, what are our options?”

Neil’s overly large group of residents throws suggestions at him. He scribbles them down quickly on the glass wall, starting each with a bullet point. The room goes quiet too soon. “Come on, guys. More.”

“Do nothing?” Kalu suggests after a beat.

Neil hesitates, then writes it down.

“Why are you writing that?” Reznick asks, sounding offended by the suggestion. Neil would be, if he thought Kalu was being serious.

He keeps his tone neutral. “We should look at every possibility before ruling out the ones we don’t want.”

“I think we all know we don’t want that,” says Morgan, folding her arms and shooting a look at Kalu, who shrugs, his lips quirking up.

“You don’t know until you’ve considered it.”

His residents spend several seconds staring at the words on the wall, each trying to figure out what they’ve missed that means doing nothing is the appropriate response to a rapidly growing tumour in an otherwise healthy female in her twenties.

“We don’t want that,” Shaun is the first to speak. “It would not benefit her but would make the tumour worse.”

“Everyone in agreement?” Neil asks, pen poised at the wall. Kalu, Reznick, Claire and Park all nod with varying expressions of confusion. He strikes out the bullet.

Neil looks at Shaun as he asks, “Okay, more options?” Shaun doesn’t seem any more relaxed than usual.

He reflects on his plan later in bed, and realises that after four days of following the internet’s advice by slowing conversations down and giving Shaun more time to process, it doesn’t seem to be having any benefit to him. Moreover, Neil’s hand is starting to hurt from all the writing and it’s confusing everyone else. It’s time for a different approach.

* * * * *

“Okay,” Neil claps his hands together, addressing the group at the nurses’ station. “Park, please update us on Mrs Ghangi.”

Park slowly takes the chart whilst Reznick rolls her eyes, Jared and Claire exchange looks and Shaun stares off into the distance. “What?” Neil asks before Park can begin.

“You’ve had us all do the same patient the last three days,” says Reznick. “Park does Mrs Ghangi. Then Claire does Lillie Cooper. Then I do Mr Smith.”

“Actually, Mr Smith was discharged this morning,” Jared says, handing her the chart, “so I guess you’ll just have to sit this one out.” Morgan gives him an acidic smile.

“It’s good to have a routine,” Neil says when she and Jared have finished pulling faces at each other. “Means you get to know your patients more in depth, you know what to expect.”

“This is unexpected,” Shaun says. Neil hadn’t noticed him taking ‘his’ patient’s chart, but he’s looking at it now. “Ms Cortinez has had seven bowel movements in the last three hours.” And yet Shaun is just about bouncing on the balls of his feet. “We should do a colonoscopy.”

“She’s only here for her knee.” As his residents crowd round the chart and start eagerly suggesting possible relationships between these two things, Shaun included, Neil decides a plan of routine has not been helpful.

* * * * *

Neil doesn’t like giving up, but his accidental ‘understand Shaun Murphy’s autism to help him in the workplace’ project is turning out to be a lot more difficult than diagnosing restrictive cardiomyopathy, treating scoliosis or even performing a septal myectomy. None of those tasks are ever textbook perfect, but in general, given some guidelines, Neil knows what to do. There is no textbook (or in this case web page) that explains Shaun Murphy.

A phrase that Neil’s come across more than once in his research is, “If you’ve met one person with autism, you’ve met one person with autism.” This is great, and he’s sure very affirming to those with autism. Unfortunately, it’s less helpful when the one person you’ve met with autism doesn’t totally understand their own condition.

Finally, though, he hits upon something that helps.

“Reznick, I want a CAT scan. Park, blood tests. Murphy, I want you to tell her what we’re doing.”

Neil sees Reznick hesitate ever-so-slightly on her way out of the door, but his residents – all of them – have gotten a lot better over the last couple of months at accepting what he says, again, without quite so much questioning and complaining. It’s not back to the good old days where they were fresh out of med school and terrified to screw up, but it’s a lot better than the teenage know-it-all phase that kicked in around nine months.

Shaun’s usually last in acting on instructions, which Neil now knows is because he’s processing them. So before he moves, Neil’s able to put out a hand and indicate for him to stay.

“What will you tell her?” he asks Shaun.

“I will tell her we are going to conduct blood tests and a CAT scan,” Shaun tells the window.

“Why?”

Shaun looks confused. “Because you told me to.”

A while back that would have annoyed Neil. Nowadays, he’s more inclined to find the misunderstandings funny (as long as they don’t have any very bad consequences). He smiles a little. “No, I mean what will you tell her when she asks why we’re doing those tests.”

Shaun provides a detailed – maybe too detailed, but that never killed anyone – summary of what they’re looking for.

“How do you think she’s going to react?”

Shaun looks for a moment as if Neil’s asked him to tap dance.

“She…should be pleased we are looking into her symptoms to decide the best course of treatment.”

“That’s not what I asked.” Neil leans back against the desk.

After a beat, Shaun says, “I don’t understand the question.”

“Okay,” Neil says, leaning forward again. “Now we’re getting somewhere. You’re going to tell her we’re looking for lots of things, one of which is cancer. People are very scared to hear they might have cancer.”

“It’s probably not-”

“I know that, you know that, but she is not a doctor so she doesn’t know that. Even,” he raises his voice here slightly as Shaun looks like he’s going to interrupt, and drops it again when Shaun’s mouth closes, “if you tell her it’s probably not cancer, she will only hear ‘cancer’ and she will remain scared. She has anxiety, so her reaction is not going to be in proportion to what’s actually happening. You have to manage her anxiety when you explain to her what we’re doing.”

“I am not a psychologist or a psychiatrist,” says Shaun.

“And that is very much for the best,” says Neil. He’s being honest, but he gets the sense Shaun understands he’s also teasing when he glances briefly at Neil and the tiniest smile flashes across his face. “You don’t have to counsel her. You just have to prepare for what she might say, or do, and know what you’re going to say or do to make this easier for her. If her anxiety rises, it’ll be more difficult to conduct the tests we need.”

Shaun nods. “High blood pressure could be caused by anxiety, but it might also be a symptom of many other conditions.”

“Exactly,” says Neil. “So – tell me that explanation again, and I’m going to react like I think she will.”

“You’re…going to role play?”

Neil smirks. “ _We’re_ going to role play.”

“I don’t like role play,” says Shaun, visibly tensing.

“That’s exactly why we’re going to do it,” Neil says. Shaun frowns a little and he amends, “No, not – we’re going to do it because you need to do it. Hit me.” A moment passes. “Figuratively. With your diagnostic plan.”

“Oh,” says Shaun, and launches into his explanation again.

A half hour later, Shaun bursts back into the office and announces, “Miss Firth is not anxious.”

“Good,” Neil smiles.

“Hmm. Does transference only relate to feelings about other people?”

“Are you saying you’re anxious?”

“Yes,” Shaun nods rapidly.

“Well…I’m glad you recognised that.” He hands Shaun a pile of papers. “Go shred these for me. One at a time.”

Shaun takes them, but asks, “Couldn’t I just put them in the confidential shredding box?”

“Yep. Shred ‘em anyway.”

“Okay,” Shaun says, and when Neil sees him next he’s happily taking Miss Firth’s vitals along with Reznick.

* * * * *

“Good job, everyone,” Dr Melendez says through a sigh as he strips off his gown and prepares to scrub out. He, Shaun, Jared and Morgan have been in the O.R. for thirteen hours and almost twenty minutes, with the surgery having gone from bad to worse and their patient almost dying not once, but three times.

As they enter the locker room, all simultaneously tired but wound up, they meet Claire, Alex and Dr Lim, who are all sat on the benches staring into space.

“Looks like yours went about as well as ours,” Dr Melendez says.

“I performed the surgery,” says Dr Lim, “and I am surprised he’s alive.”

Once all the necessary post-op work is done and it’s time to leave, Dr Melendez announces they’re going out for drinks. “We need this,” he tells the residents, as many of them look sleepily at him.

“I need cocaine and anonymous sex,” Dr Lim says. “Or maybe X-Men and hot chocolate.” She pauses in the act of zipping up her bag. “Or some combination of the two. Anyway, see ya, kids.”

“Can I have cocaine and hot chocolate?” Jared asks Dr Melendez, who doesn’t answer.

They all walk to the entrance together, and Shaun sits down to wait for his bus. The others don’t say goodbye, which seems unusual, but then Claire turns around. “Shaun?”

The others also stop. “Come on, Shaun. We’re going for drinks,” says Dr Melendez.

Shaun shakes his head. “I’m not going for drinks. I’m going home.”

“It’s not an option. It’s…team building.”

“It’s half past nine,” Shaun answers. “My show comes on at ten.”

“Record it,” Dr Melendez says at the same time Claire says, “watch it later.”

“I always watch my show at ten,” Shaun explains. “Unless I’m at work, but I’m not at work now.”

“Come _on_ ,” Morgan says. “He doesn’t want to go. Let’s leave him to it.”

Dr Melendez looks at her. “That’s not what he said.” She looks away, and Jared raises his eyebrows.

There’s a pause while the others seem to be waiting for something that isn’t the bus. Then Dr Melendez says, “How about we have drinks at Shaun’s?”

Shaun looks up, confused. “I don’t have drinks.”

“We can get some on the way. You can watch your show, and we’ll have drinks as well.”

Shaun thinks about this. He doesn’t particularly want everyone coming to his home. They’ll probably be loud and ask questions about things and move stuff. Then again, Dr Melendez is saying they need to have drinks, and maybe having drinks with people he knows at home will be better than having drinks in public, as well as missing his show.

“I cannot bartend,” Shaun says eventually, just to make sure their expectations are realistic.

“I can,” Morgan announces, and when everyone looks at her she adds, “YouTube is very informative.”

* * * * *

“Wow,” says Jared as they enter Shaun’s apartment, “you are really tidy.”

“This is exactly how I imagined your home would look,” says Park. Shaun nods and goes to turn on his television.

“That’s because you profile everyone. Which is creepy,” Morgan tells Alex as she and Claire start taking drinks out of bags and arranging them on the counter in the kitchen area. Neil follows them, noting Shaun who looks over at them, but settles down on his mattress in front of the TV.

“Because you don’t categorise people so you can manipulate them in the way that’s best for you?”

Neil tunes out their argument as he grabs glasses. He’s half-surprised Shaun hasn’t labelled all his drawers and cupboards, but the layout is naturally the most logical one, meaning he finds them on the first try. He’s still having the same misgivings he’d been having on the ride over about his reckless suggestion that they all go to Shaun’s place. It evidently seemed like a great idea to his tongue at the time, but it’s out of left field for him and he doesn’t know where it came from. He counts himself lucky that none of his residents have noticed he’s being a little odd.

“Are you going to give us the guided tour, then?” Jared jokes to Shaun when they’ve all got their drinks – all except Shaun, who politely declined one. Neil plans to work on that later – he was serious about them all needing it. Alex, Claire and Morgan are debating some ethical principle, and Neil’s actively trying not to participate in that conversation. Ethics seem to be a much bigger issue with this group of residents than he’s had to deal with before, and frankly he’s getting a bit tired of it.

Shaun doesn’t answer Jared’s question; when Neil looks over, he’s engrossed in his show. Jared looks at Neil and shrugs a shoulder as if to say, “What can you do?” and then moves as if to go and join him.

Neil holds a hand out toward Jared without thinking, and shakes his head minutely. “Let’s grab chairs.” He tips his head toward the dining table, and Jared follows him.

Morgan, naturally, has an opinion about this.

“Why are we all seated over here while he’s over there, when we’re only _here_ because he wouldn’t come to a bar?” Neil notices that while she complains, she makes sure she gets a chair before Alex and Claire get there, so Claire ends up leaning against the wall.

“We’ll go over there in a while. Or he’ll come over here.”

Morgan fixes him with a stare which feels like she’s trying to pierce his soul with her eyesight alone. She may be succeeding. “You’re being very thoughtful. I hear you weren’t always this forgiving of his ‘idiosyncrasies’.”

Neil sees the looks Claire and Jared exchange out of the corner of his eye as he returns Reznick’s gaze, though his is more ‘unimpressed’. “Shaun can hear you. We might not be at work but it’s still unprofessional to speak about a colleague like that.”

Morgan purses her lips and looks down, but he has no doubt she’s not feeling the slightest bit of shame. He is, meanwhile, but he’s not about to admit that to her. He takes a sip of his whiskey. “If my team are happy,” he gestures over his shoulder to where Shaun is sitting, “they work better.” He glances, barely, at Jared. “Apart from some people, who are motivated better by being miserable.”

“Being unhappy does give you a reason to keep trying,” says Claire, thoughtfully, and this thankfully ignites another debate which takes the residents’ attention for long enough for Neil to think about what he’d said, and then decide not to think about it any more.

Except later on he realises he’s right, when Shaun’s show finishes and he pours himself a glass of soda and comes to join them, leaning on the wall beside Claire. He’s not comfortable, per se, but he’s trying. That makes two of them.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've taken a bit of artistic licence here with the surgeons spending so much time diagnosing someone, but I figure it's in keeping with the show's own slightly vague boundaries around their roles.
> 
> Future updates are likely to take longer, as I'm sadly back to work now. However, we appear to be more than halfway through.

“This makes no _sense_ ,” Jared groans, as he, Shaun, Claire and Dr Melendez pore over scans, charts, books, tablets and images.

Dr Melendez sighs as Shaun says, “That’s the eighth time you’ve said that.”

“That’s the eighth time _you’ve_ said _that_ ,” Dr Melendez says. Before Shaun can correct him, he holds up a hand and says, “No, I know, I know, like the third.”

“Fourth,” Shaun says, but quietly. “If you substitute eighth for the appropriate ordinal number.”

There’s quiet for a few minutes.

“How about radiation poisoning?” Claire suggests. The others look at the data for only a few seconds before in turn looking back at Claire. Shaun doesn’t know what she sees that he doesn’t, but it turns out it’s nothing. She shrugs and says, “It’s just something we haven’t suggested yet.”

“Mostly because it fits almost none of his symptoms,” says Dr Melendez. He looks at the clock. “Okay, I’m calling it. We need a break.”

Jared and Claire get up immediately, if sluggishly, but Shaun continues reading the paragraph he’s on. This could explain some of the man’s mystery new symptoms, if his original diagnosis explained-

“Murphy. You too.” His thought process is interrupted.

“Dr Lieberman has some interesting theories about-“

“I don’t care,” he’s interrupted again. “Unless she has written the answer to this exact patient on that exact page, you need to take a break, now. We’ve been at this too long.”

“If I take a break I’ll lose focus,” Shaun explains. “I almost have it.”

“No,” says Dr Melendez, “you don’t.” This time he grabs the book out of Shaun’s hands. “Focus is good, in surgery, with a clear goal. Focus when we’re not getting anywhere and we’re all hungry and cranky is bad. Let’s go.”

“I’m not cranky,” says Shaun, except he is, a little. He wants his book back. But he doesn’t think Dr Melendez will respond too well to him taking it back, and he’s placed it on the table behind him, out of Shaun’s reach.

Apparently without a choice for the time being, Shaun gets up and heads to the cafeteria. Dr Melendez walks with him. When they get there, it’s pretty full, being dinner time. Shaun realises unhappily that they’ll have stopped serving lunch options, so he’s missed his sandwich and will have to have a hot meal. He considers it while waiting in line and figures he could get a sandwich from the mini-mart near home and have it for supper, but that might be too filling.

When he’s been served, Shaun looks around for Claire and Jared. He spots them eventually, but they’re at a table with four nurses, and it’s already looking squashed.

“Come on,” says Dr Melendez, surprising him, as Shaun had thought he’d already left. “I can see a space outside.” They weave their way through the tables to get to the doors.

It’s actually a little less crowded on the terrace, which is better. They find a small table with two seats and set their food down. Dr Melendez has pasta and meatballs, with what looks like coffee. Shaun leans over and sniffs. It is coffee. Dr Melendez is staring at him.

“You checking it’s not poisoned?” he asks.

“It’s coffee,” Shaun replies.

“I…didn’t need a consult on that, but thanks,” says Dr Melendez.

Shaun lays out his cutlery, napkin and drink in the right places and begins to eat.

Two mouthfuls in, he pauses and says, “Malignant sarcoma.”

“Gesundheit,” Dr Melendez responds. Shaun hadn’t heard anyone sneeze, but then he was concentrating.

“He could have a malignant sarcoma,” Shaun says again, “and the pressure could be-”

“No,” Dr Melendez interrupts him. “No, Shaun.” He shakes his head.

“Why not?”

“Because it’s lunch time, that’s why not. This is a break. We are coming out here to get a break from that case.”

Shaun looks at their food. “We’re eating dinner.”

“Okay, dinner,” Dr Melendez sighs. “Whatever. A meal, not diagnostic time.” He looks at Shaun for a few seconds, which Shaun can feel although he isn’t looking back. “You’re going to keep thinking about this, aren’t you?”

Shaun nods. “I perseverate.”

“Then new topic of conversation. Not medical.”

“Not medical?” Dr Melendez nods and takes a sip of his coffee.

Shaun struggles to think of a suitable topic of conversation, which isn’t helped by Dr Melendez gesturing to his food and saying, “Eat.” He starts eating, but that’s another distraction.

“The weather is very pleasant today,” he finds eventually.

Dr Melendez smiles at him. “In San Jose? Well I’ll be damned.”

Shaun’s about to reply when he realises – “That was sarcasm.”

“You are correct!” Dr Melendez seems pleased about his statement, which is odd. “Now we’ve covered the weather, what else?” He takes another sip of his coffee, which triggers a reminder of Shaun’s earlier thoughts.

“Coffee with pasta is an odd choice. And it’s late in the day to be drinking coffee. Aren’t you concerned it will disrupt your sleep habits?”

This time, Dr Melendez smiles even wider; it’s almost a grin. “Now we’re getting somewhere. Sure, it’s an odd choice, but you can’t knock it till you’ve tried it.”

This time the conversation continues, and they talk about food past the point both of them have finished eating. A couple times Dr Melendez tells him he’s getting too medical again, like when Shaun starts talking about his digestive health, but he seems more relaxed than he usually does when Shaun makes the same mistake more than once, and it makes it easier for Shaun to relax in turn and continue the conversation.

After an indeterminate length of time, Dr Melendez glances at his watch as Shaun’s telling him which types of pasta he likes (tagliatelle is too gloopy; penne is good but only with thin sauces) and instead of replying in kind, says they’d better get back. As much as he wants to get back to the diagnosis and help their patient, Shaun is slow in standing and gathering his tray; the shift in focus is very sudden.

“I miss eating with Dr Glassman,” Shaun says absently, as they take their trays and garbage back inside. He remembers it when he eats with someone else, because it’s the same but different. Dr Melendez nods. “But I like eating with you.”

Dr Melendez looks at him this time, as they’re walking back toward the elevator. He opens his mouth, then closes it and nods again. “Me too,” he says then.

“You like eating with yourself too?” Shaun knows that’s not what he meant, but he can’t help himself asking these questions sometimes. They just come out. But as he’s been during their lunch, Dr Melendez isn’t annoyed; he smiles instead.

“Yeah. I really do enjoy eating with myself. I’m excellent company.”

Shaun smiles back at him. He’s funny.

* * * * *

Neil knows within the first second of seeing Shaun that he’s not in a good place. He’s explaining test results to a patient in the E.R., but his posture is taut and he’s speaking more quickly than usual. Even though Neil overhears him use some of the phrases they’ve practised before – a couple of role plays went a long way – his tone is giving him away and the patient’s looking worried.

“Dr Murphy,” Neil says as soon as he leaves the cubicle. “Mrs Lopez has arrived. I’ll need you upstairs in fifteen.”

Shaun nods, jerkily. “I have lab results to collect and an x-ray to order and…I need to ask the janitor to fix the cupboard in eight,” he throws a hand vaguely behind his right shoulder, “and then I will inform Dr Lim I am needed upstairs.”

Neil has a hand hovering over Shaun’s arm – not touching – just as he finishes his last sentence, because he knows these days he has to time the intervention just right, before Shaun spins away from him. Shaun looks at the hand and then at Neil, though his gaze doesn’t stay.

Neil makes a guess. “Have you eaten since you started today?”

“I have been very busy,” Shaun replies.

Neil nods as his eyes glance to the heavens. He’s not surprised. “Okay, I can’t have you come meet our patient like this. You look like you’re gonna have a meltdown.”

Shaun shakes his head, slowly at first and then more determinedly. “No, no I won’t.”

“It’s not a choice, Shaun. I’m worried it’s going to happen anyway.”

“No,” Shaun says, louder, “I will not-”

“Dr Murphy,” Neil says over him, even louder, very aware that they are in the middle of the emergency room. He catches sight of Audrey coming out of a cubicle a ways down; he lifts his head slightly at her so she knows he’s got this, and she carries on. “Please follow me immediately.”

He turns smartly on his heel and walks away, knowing it’ll take Shaun a second or two to register what he’s said, and then he’ll follow because he knows the conversation isn’t finished. It works; when Neil turns to face him again they’re in an empty side room.

“You need to take care of yourself before you can take care of any of our patients,” Neil says, trying to meet Shaun’s eyes as much as he will allow. “I’ll tell Lim to pass your outstanding tasks on to Kalu. You, go to my locker,” he hands Shaun a key, “and you’ll find some chips and power bars.”

“I don’t eat chips or power bars for lunch,” Shaun says, inevitably.

Neil folds his arms. “So you’re going to go to the cafeteria and get some lunch?”

Shaun has to think about this before he says, “No, I need to meet with Mrs Lopez.”

“Exactly. Chips and power bars it is. Go.”

He heaves a sigh as he watches Shaun leave, thankfully toward the elevator and not the E.R. again.

It’s after that that Neil starts to look for the pattern, and he finds it very quickly. He can’t say that Shaun will definitely go into meltdown if he doesn’t eat regularly. What he can say is that Shaun will get cranky, and temporarily lose some of the ability he’s gained to present as ‘normal’. Oddly, this doesn’t seem to happen during surgery, as if the experience is just so exciting to Shaun that his body doesn’t notice anything else.

He brings this up with Shaun one day, after a nurse complains to him about ‘Dr Murphy’s unprompted outburst’. (He only realises hours later, after he smooths things over, that he hadn’t even questioned why she’d come to him instead of speaking to Shaun himself, or going to Lim since she was technically his boss that day.)

“You need to eat regularly,” Neil tells him. “More so than most people. I get cranky if I miss meals, but you…you get…more autistic.” A few months ago he wouldn’t have said that, too ashamed of how he could have said it in the past as an insult. These days, he’s pretty sure Shaun knows he’s just being factual. (Although it’s fair to say Shaun probably wouldn’t have picked up on the insult a while back anyway, but he’s more astute these days.)

“I know,” says Shaun, maddeningly. “I always eat regularly when I’m not at work.”

“So do it at work, too,” Neil says.

Shaun huffs a laugh. “I can’t just stop treating someone because it’s a meal time.”

Neil closes his eyes and breathes out slowly.

* * * * *

“Reznick, Park, tell her the plan, get the consent then prep her. Book an O.R. for three thirty. Murphy, let’s get some food.”

“Why doesn’t he have to help?” Morgan asks Dr Melendez. Alex has already left. Morgan smiles at Shaun, but it doesn’t look right, though he can’t say why. “She likes him.”

“She grabbed my butt,” Shaun tells Dr Melendez, recalling it vividly. “It was very uncomfortable.”

Dr Melendez raises his eyebrows. “Okay, I didn’t know that, but now that’s the reason.”

Morgan huffs. “So it can’t be the reason.”

“The reason is because I’m your boss,” Dr Melendez says, and he and Morgan stare at each other until Morgan gives up and leaves.

“You’ll take post-op care,” Dr Melendez tells Shaun, and then they leave too but head the other way. It’s a longer route to the cafeteria, but Shaun’s okay with that.

* * * * *

Neil doesn’t like meeting with Andrews when it’s planned and he knows the purpose. Marcus is exhausting to work with, treating every interaction like it’s a game of chess, whether it’s a Board meeting, a consult or holding the door open for someone. Neil _hates_ meeting with Andrews when it’s a surprise.

“Please take a seat, Dr Melendez,” he says as Neil enters his office.

“Uh oh,” Neil says as he sits down. “Using my title in private is never a good sign.”

Marcus steeples his fingers and smiles falsely at him. Neil has never been able to work out why he does this, the long pauses where you start to feel uncomfortable. He probably could figure it out, but he’s been trying to avoid thinking about it since spending time with Marcus is tiring enough on its own.

“I have received a complaint about your interaction with your residents,” Marcus says, eventually, and Neil sits upright. “It’s not a formal complaint – at present – but I have assured Dr Reznick I will address it.”

“Oh,” Neil says, slumping again and resting his head on his hand. “Morgan.”

“I hope you’re taking this seriously, Dr Melendez,” Marcus frowns at him.

“Extremely,” says Neil. He doesn’t bother to pretend with body language. Morgan is annoying, more so than any of his other residents except maybe Shaun (although recently, Neil hasn’t been half as annoyed with him as before) but Neil’s careful not to let that show any more than he does with the others. She would easily make it his fault rather than reflect on her own behaviour, and it’s not worth the hassle. However, it seems like maybe he’s slipped up, though he can’t think how.

Marcus takes a deep and meaningful breath. “Dr Reznick has complained that you are favouring Dr Murphy over your other residents.”

Neil waits, but nothing else is said. “How?” he asks.

Marcus slowly and deliberately picks up the tablet in front of him and consults it. “You have been eating with Dr Murphy frequently in the last few weeks, _sans_ your other residents.”

Neil frowns. “I wasn’t aware I had to spend time with _any_ of my residents during my breaks.”

“You have also been,” Marcus pauses as he pretends to read the screen, “providing Dr Murphy with gifts on occasion, to the exclusion of the other doctors.”

Neil is baffled by that. “Gifts? What gifts?”

“Snacks.” This time Marcus doesn’t bother to read the tablet, which is a shame because it means Neil can’t hide his expression of disgusted disbelief. Marcus frowns, because he’s taking this very seriously and he thinks Neil isn’t. He’s right, but Neil schools his face anyway.

“I’ve given him some fruit and some power bars when he hasn’t stopped to eat,” Neil tells Marcus. “If I thought any of my other residents needed them I would gladly share with them too.” That’s a little untrue; he’d rather watch Morgan starve just at this moment, but he supposes in the moment he would still share.

“Are you aware that this looks like favouritism?” Marcus asks him.

Neil answers with a question of his own. “Have any of my other residents complained?”

Marcus does his thing where he suddenly shifts from being a boss to a peer. It’s never comfortable because you can never tell when he’s going to switch back. “No,” Marcus says as he leans back in his chair. “Actually, I’m pretty sure they’re just happy you’re keeping him out of their hair. He can be…a bit much to deal with.”

Neil thinks, _yeah, I thought that before I got to know him_ , but he doesn’t say it. “It benefits everyone, then,” he says instead. “Look, Murphy is more likely to eat if someone eats with him - _tells_ him to eat – and when he eats better, he’s more focused. Less stressed. Now, I can stop eating lunch with him if you want, but I think you’ll find people will tell you he’s been easier to work with in the last few weeks. That goes for patients too.”

It’s childish, but he’s a little bit pleased when Marcus scowls in response. “I suggest you also offer individual time with your other residents,” Marcus says, which evaporates the feeling pretty fast. “Then they can all feel they’re benefiting equally from your expertise.”

Neil pulls a face. “We don’t even talk about medicine. Deliberately. Shaun gets nothing additional from me than my other residents get.” He realises he slipped up there, using his first name in this circumstance, but he’s holding a lot of other things back right now, like his opinion about Morgan.

“Nevertheless,” Marcus says, steepling again. He’s back to boss mode. “The others wouldn’t know that, not being present, so my suggestion remains the same. If our residents are going to thrive here, they need to feel equally valued.”

Neil thinks, unbidden, of Andrews telling him he needed to get used to Shaun being on his team, and Glassman telling him not to treat him differently, and he can’t be sure if Andrews is thinking about it too. The shame has lessened, certainly, but it’s still there.

He considers the idea of having individual meals with Morgan, Jared, Claire and Alex. Then he says, “I’ll stop eating with Dr Murphy in the cafeteria.”

Marcus frowns at him. “I’m not suggesting you stop eating with Dr Murphy.”

“Nope,” Neil says, “but I am. Then it’ll just go back to how it was before.” Much better that, than be fired for stabbing one of his residents with a fork.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the delay on this one. I've been going through some personal stuff which has made it difficult to find time and energy to write, so the next chapter will probably be a while as well, but I'm committed to finishing this. Thank you for all the kudos and comments; they really mean a lot.

When Dr Melendez doesn’t suggest they go to the cafeteria one day, Shaun barely notices it. They haven’t been doing it every day anyway. When he doesn’t the next day, even though neither of them are particularly busy, Shaun thinks it’s a bit odd, but he often misses reasons why people do things that everyone else just _knows_ , so he shrugs it off, and eventually goes to the cafeteria alone. On day three Shaun finishes a nineteen hour shift hungry and grumpy, and it’s been a while since that happened. He doesn’t actually realise being hungry is the problem until it’s time for dinner, and two bites in he already feels _so_ much better.

By the next time he sees Dr Melendez he’s forgotten about being hungry, but when Dr Melendez comes back from the cafeteria alone (there’s cheese sauce on his sleeve he doesn’t seem to have noticed), Shaun remembers that the pattern has changed.

“How come you stopped telling me to eat?” he asks.

Dr Melendez looks up from the tablet he’s just picked up. Claire has been helping Shaun double-check the charts from the morning rounds, but she walks away at that point without saying anything. A nurse who was using the computer gets up suddenly too.

“I figured maybe you’d worked that out on your own by now,” Dr Melendez says, after a long pause.

“I know,” Shaun says. “But I forget. Or I’m busy. Or-”

“I get it,” Dr Melendez interrupts him, sighing. “I didn’t really mean that. I know you don’t prioritise it.”

“Then why did you say that?”

It takes Dr Melendez even longer to respond this time. Shaun wonders if he’s tired. He looks like he might be, or stressed. Or perhaps constipated, but generally his bowel habits seem to be fairly healthy, so that’s less likely. “It caused some problems,” Dr Melendez says. Shaun’s trying to work this out when he clarifies, “Going to the cafeteria with you caused some problems.”

Shaun nods. He doesn’t understand, but he acknowledges the words. He’s about to go back to the charts, both because they’re what he’s meant to be doing and because they’re a good distraction from the familiar clenching feeling in his abdomen, when Dr Melendez holds his hand out above Shaun’s arm. He always does it like that, hovering but not touching, a silent concession to Shaun’s aversion to touch that most people don’t bother with. They either touch him anyway or they try to stay a certain distance from him at all times, like they’re afraid if they get too close they won’t be able to help enveloping him. Dr Melendez is different; he gets as close as he thinks Shaun can manage, treats him as close to normal as he can, even when that’s not very close at all. The funny thing is that Shaun thinks he might actually be okay if Dr Melendez _did_ touch him, like he did in the O.R. that time. But that’s a theory that’s scary to test.

“Do you miss it?” Dr Melendez asks, after Shaun’s been staring at his hand for a few seconds. Shaun looks up at him, then away.

“Yes,” he says.

Dr Melendez’s hand drops. “Yeah. Look – ” He puts a hand to the back of his head and rubs down his neck, “You want to…” He looks around them. Shaun does too, and doesn’t see anything out of the ordinary, but Dr Melendez seems to be looking for something different. “Come to my office when you finish today.”

“Do I want to?” Shaun clarifies.

“No, do it,” says Dr Melendez. He breathes a hard sigh, then looks back at the tablet he’s holding. “Tell me what’s wrong with these numbers.” Shaun does.

* * * * *

Neil feels like a fool. He also feels nervous, like he’s thirteen again and about to ask Becky-May to the movies, which is exactly why he feels like a fool. This situation does not require or warrant nerves, and yet…here they are.

He could have asked Shaun if he wanted to grab dinner earlier, when the idea first struck him. It made sense; Shaun was missing spending time with him and he was missing spending time with Shaun, so to suggest a way to rectify that was just logical. But something told Neil that suggesting it where other people could hear was a bad idea. People, Neil knows, can be interfering jackasses when they want to.

The logic hasn’t changed, and yet he actually feels nervous about this, like it matters if Shaun says no. What the heck is that about?

When Shaun finally arrives, Neil is drumming a pen on the edge of his desk and staring into space. He jumps when Shaun speaks, since apparently the kid can move like a panther when he wants to. “Dr Melendez?”

“Do you want to get some dinner?” Neil asks quickly, before any other thoughts can start jumping for attention again.

Shaun looks out the window. “No,” he shakes his head. Neil has a moment which is too short to identify what he feels before Shaun continues, “It’s too late for dinner. The next meal is breakfast.”

“Breakfast, then?” Neil asks, knowing now he’s hopeful.

Shaun looks at him. “I would like that.”

So they go out for breakfast. It’s four in the morning, but having been a surgeon in San Jose for some time now, Neil has a pretty good knowledge of the places between the hospital and home that serve food, and when they’re open. He considers their options while they leave, and figures the brightly lit diner is probably going to appeal more to Shaun than the dingy café. He might not appreciate the lights, but he’ll definitely appreciate their hygiene standards better.

“I hope Mrs Aventis doesn’t get pregnant again,” Shaun says, out of nowhere as he’s pouring syrup on his pancakes. They haven’t said much up to that point, which is fine by Neil and seemed to be fine by Shaun, too. “She’s very lucky neither of her children have so far inherited the gene.”

Neil realises, suddenly and disturbingly, that Shaun has seen the syrup and thought about Mrs Aventis’ blood and how it wasn’t clotting properly, and is very glad his breakfast doesn’t contain any sauce. “No shop talk, Shaun.”

Shaun pauses with his cutlery poised ready. “I wasn’t talking about a shop.”

“It’s an expression,” Neil says, smiling and shaking his head. “You must have heard it before. It means no talking about work.”

“Oh,” says Shaun. “I didn’t realise that rule still applied outside of the hospital.” He starts to cut up his pancakes. He lasts about thirty seconds before, “Did you read Dr Cooper’s article about blood plasma and communicable diseases?”

Neil sighs internally and figures it’s not about _their specific work_. If he stopped Shaun talking about medicine altogether, he might just go completely silent. And that poses a thought; what else _does_ Shaun like? But before he can ask, Shaun quotes a sentence from the article which is clearly horseshit, and they spend an enjoyable twenty minutes tearing Dr Cooper’s credibility to shreds (or in Shaun’s case, methodically and completely non-maliciously pointing out his faults).

* * * * *

Three days later, Shaun is swaying on his feet by the time they leave the O.R.. He knows what time it is in the context of the surgery, how many hours it’s been since they started, yet time has ceased to have any meaning in the outside world. He’s genuinely surprised to see daylight when he passes a window.

Dr Melendez doesn’t look great either when he catches up to Shaun as he waits for his bus. “Dinner?” Dr Melendez asks. He usually uses a lot more words, but Shaun understands as he nods, and follows Dr Melendez to his car.

Shaun usually wouldn’t think of accepting such a vague invitation. He needs to know what will happen, what might happen, so he can plan for any eventuality. It’s when unexpected things happen that things turn bad. But for some reason it feels okay to just trust Dr Melendez with this. Shaun knows he’s been trying to help him with his autism and the problems it causes; like Dr Glassman, but in a different way. He can be fairly sure Dr Melendez won’t take him to a noisy, busy restaurant or try to order food for them to share. But it’s more than that. He feels like even if those things did happen, Dr Melendez being there would make them easier to tolerate. Not easy, definitely. But easier. And easier means a lot.

“Where are we going?” Shaun asks when Dr Melendez pulls up in the parking lot of a fancy-looking apartment block.

“My place,” Dr Melendez tells him as they exit the car. “I don’t know about you, but I’m too tired to be out in public right now.” He glances at Shaun. “That okay?”

“Are we still having dinner?”

“Of course,” Dr Melendez smiles. “I make a mean pickle omelette.”

Shaun knows he shouldn’t say, “That sounds disgusting,” but he also knows he needs to find a way to tell Dr Melendez there is no way he’s eating that.

He’s saved when Dr Melendez laughs and says, “I’m joking, Shaun.”

“Oh.” They climb the stairs. “I’m very glad.”

What they end up having is a simple stir fry with chow mein sauce. “You’re a good cook,” Shaun tells Dr Melendez after they’ve eaten, sitting at a glass-topped table with soda for Shaun, and ‘just one glass of wine on a school night’ for Dr Melendez.

“Well, cookery’s not dissimilar to surgery.”

Shaun laughs.

Dr Melendez laughs too. “Seriously! Think about it: you have to be able to cut and measure precisely, you’re monitoring lots of things at once, and sometimes you have to just wing it and hope for the best.”

Shaun smiles because he knows that’s not true. “I don’t believe Dr Melendez has ever ‘winged it’ in surgery.”

Dr Melendez takes a sip of his wine. “You didn’t know me in my days as a resident.” He continues before Shaun can follow that line of conversation, “Anyway, you can’t call me Dr Melendez in my own apartment.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m not always a doctor. I mean,” Dr Melendez gestures vaguely, “I am always a doctor. But sometimes I’m not… _being_ a doctor.”

“What are you being right now?” Shaun asks, because he’s genuinely curious. He feels like he’s been a doctor since the moment he found out he’d passed his final examinations.

“Neil,” says Dr Melendez. He stares at Shaun intensely, and it’s hard to look away. “You should call me Neil.”

“Neil,” Shaun repeats. Dr Melendez nods.

“Only outside of work though,” he adds.

“When you’re not being a doctor.” It makes sense. Shaun likes that.

* * * * *

Neil realises he should have explained to Shaun about why they aren’t eating together at work any more, and warned him that the fact that they’re doing it outside of work probably shouldn’t be shared with anyone else. Unfortunately, he realises this a little too late.

“So what did everyone get up to at the weekend?” Morgan asks as Neil’s team gather at the start of their shift, everybody eager to know who’s been assigned to the lung lobectomy and who gets to assist with replacing the tricuspid and pulmonary valves.

He’s not really listening to their replies until Park says, “My private life is exactly that,” which makes Neil look over to see Morgan glaring at Park, which is having exactly zero effect as he’s hunting through his bag.

“Fine,” she says, though she clearly doesn’t think so. “Shaun?”

 _That_ is when Neil realises that Shaun’s answer is going to involve, “Neil came to my apartment and we made pancakes,” and he does the only thing that comes to mind to prevent that.

“Okay! Pop quiz!” Shaun, Morgan, Park, Jared and Claire all simultaneously jump (though for Park it’s more of a minute startle), which is not unexpected since Neil is speaking at about the same volume as a Spinal Tap concert. He winces internally at how uncomfortable Shaun looks, but doesn’t dare apologise.

“Pop quiz on what, the leading cause of deafness?” Jared says when Neil forgets to actually follow up with anything.

“No. Enough chitchat. What are the least likely complications of a lobectomy?”

He grabs Shaun – figuratively – as they’re finishing up in the locker room, since Jared’s already left. “Hey. Listen, you probably shouldn’t tell anyone that we…” It suddenly becomes hard to finish that sentence, since it sounds ridiculous already. They’re socialising together, not committing murders or planning a bank raid.

But Shaun is waiting patiently for him to finish the sentence, and Shaun won’t hear the unsaid words, won’t read the subtext. “You shouldn’t tell anyone at work that we see each other outside of work. Especially Reznick.”

Shaun doesn’t outwardly react, which means he’s thinking. “Why would I tell Morgan that?”

“I mean, if she asks. She won’t ask directly, but she might ask a question that leads to that information.”

“So…do you want me to lie?”

Now Neil’s stuck. Anybody else, he could say ‘yes’ and they’d just get it and they’d lie. Asking Shaun to lie though is like asking Claire to be the bad cop – she probably can, but it’ll take a lot of effort and she won’t be comfortable doing it.

Neil considers it before he answers, “I guess not. But maybe just…try and omit some information if you can? Like if she asks about your weekend, tell her the things you did that weren’t hanging out with me.”

Shaun nods slowly, although Neil’s not sure he’s got it.

It’s frustrating, because they’re not doing anything wrong. They weren’t doing anything wrong before, either, but this is even less wrong because they’re not even at work. Colleagues strike up friendships that move outside of work all the time, even bosses and subordinates, because in their profession it’s hard to find other people who’ll accept that sometimes you go to work for a day and a half and sometimes you come home at three am when you were meant to be there at eight pm. Besides, spending so much time at the hospital leaves little time left over for developing meaningful relationships on those precious days off.

He tries his best, too, to get Shaun to stick to the ‘no shop talk’ rule, and Shaun is definitely improving with it. They’d actually managed a half hour conversation on Sunday about some British programme that Shaun loves, that only ran for one season (well, hardly; six episodes but apparently that’s not unusual) which he has on DVD and can quote entire scenes from. Truthfully it wasn’t so much of a conversation as Shaun rhapsodising about it, but it was fascinating to watch him be so interested in something that wasn’t medicine.

If Morgan _does_ find out and raises a stink about it, maybe Neil will suggest she watches that with them. She definitely won’t appreciate it like Neil does.

* * * * *

“The problem is not the tumour,” Shaun repeats for the second time, as Jared throws his hands in the air. Shaun flinches, not because he’s afraid of anything but because everything is starting to feel like a threat.

Jared waves the tablet with the MRI on screen in front of his face. “How is it not the problem? It’s the size of her head!”

Shaun shakes his head. He feels like banging it against the wall but that has never ended well, so he grabs his hair instead with one hand and pulls, just hard enough to soothe.

As he starts to explain, again, just why the tumour can’t be responsible for the patient’s symptoms, Dr Melendez returns. He throws a packaged sandwich at Shaun, who fumbles it but manages to catch. “You owe me five bucks.” He puts a bottle of water on the table. “So. It’s not the tumour?”

Jared makes a noise that sounds like he’s trying to pass a very large bowel movement and he’s angry about it, but Shaun can ignore that now because Neil is listening to him.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay on this. I appreciate your patience and your feedback. Real life is still kicking my ass, but I'm determined to finish this. There's just one chapter to go, I think. Now please enjoy somebody finally getting a clue.

Neil’s at home, halfway through an episode of _Gilmore Girls_ that he’s seen before and didn’t even want to watch the first time, but too tired to put in the effort to find something he does want to watch, when his phone buzzes.

It feels like it takes far more energy than it should to reach over to the coffee table and pick it up, but he smiles when he sees it’s a message from Shaun.

_There’s an all-day jazz festival going on at Café Stritch._

Neil often can’t tell what to expect from Shaun (it’s about half and half ‘operates - often literally - to a script without deviating’ and ‘total non-sequiturs’). Even so, this surprises him. He decides to forgo the drawn-out line of enquiry to find out how Shaun knows this and why he’s texting it to him and get right to the point, or rather what he thinks the point might be.

_Do you want to go?_

It’s less than a minute before his phone buzzes with the reply.

_No. I don’t like jazz music._

Okay, so he missed the point. Back to the line of enquiry.

_So how come you’re telling me about it?_

This reply is quicker.

_You like jazz music._

Neil smiles again, and it stays on his face as he replies.

_That I do. Thanks, Shaun._ He doesn’t bother to add that he already knew about the festival since it’s on every year, and he’d chosen to forgo it because he’s not that interested in the artists they have on this time.

He expects the exchange to end there, since it seems to have served its purpose in Shaun’s mind, so he’s surprised when his phone buzzes again within a minute.

_Are you going to go?_

Neil thinks for a second before he responds.

_Not this time. I’m too tired for an all-day festival._ That much is true; even if he’d wanted to go he knows he’d have been yawning two acts in.

Shaun doesn’t respond this time. Neil isn’t really watching the TV, and when he realises it’s been several minutes and he’s just been waiting for his phone to buzz he picks it up again. _Nothing interesting going on today?_ Maybe the jazz festival line wasn’t about that at all; maybe Shaun was just following Neil’s previous advice about starting difficult conversations with something ‘fluffy’. Of course, that still required Shaun understanding what other people might find difficult, which was no easy task. It hadn’t really felt like a lead-in, but you couldn’t always tell.

_I’m not working. Claire asked me to swap shifts with her so I’m working tomorrow instead._

Neil is still thinking about how to respond when another text comes through.

_Are you too tired to do anything? Or just an all-day thing?_

Neil’s grinning now, although he can’t explain why. Instead of texting back, he hits the call button. It rings twice before Shaun answers.

“Hello?” he says, his tone suggesting he doesn’t know what this call might be about, but Neil’s spent enough time with him to know that’s how he answers every call, always after checking the screen to discern the caller.

“Depends what anything is,” Neil replies.

Shaun takes a second to respond. “How about going to the movies?”

Neil’s surprised. “You like going to the movies?”

“Not when it’s busy,” Shaun says. “But I like it when it’s quiet. I mean the theatre, not the movie.”

“Yeah, movies can be pretty loud,” Neil replies. He’s already up and looking for a jacket, even though they haven’t decided anything yet. “Doesn’t that bother you?”

Shaun hums like he’s thinking about it. “It’s only one source of sound,” he says, “because it’s so loud. And I know it’s coming. So it’s okay.”

“Well, okay.” Neil considers blue over dark green. “What movie do you want to see?”

Three hours later, it’s dark outside when they leave the theatre. After a pretty intense horror/thriller with numerous jump scares, Neil finds himself looking ahead at every corner, glancing twice at people who pass them on the other side of the street and very aware of the sound of car horns and motorcycles. Despite this, he’s even more aware of the way Shaun seems to be _alive_. He’s just spent two and a half hours being scared to death, literally jumping on several occasions, and yet he seems as happy as if he’d just performed an aortic resection all on his own.

“So what’d you think?” Neil asks as they make their way to a local diner. He’d told Shaun he needed comfort food.

“It was very scary,” Shaun replies, grinning. “I didn’t expect the father to be the demon. I thought for sure it was the aunt.”

“Well, that’s what they wanted you to think,” Neil says, smiling despite himself. “But you like getting scared to death?”

Shaun laughs. “Of course. Only when it’s not real. If that really happened to me I would not enjoy it.”

“That’s good to know.”

* * * * *

Once Neil knows Shaun likes going to the movies, he figures they can make a regular thing of it, maybe like a weekly date. Shaun needs to do things that aren’t work-related more often, and while their meals together – now at least a couple of times a week – are fun, they’re more about biological necessity than having a well-rounded life. Life, meanwhile, doesn’t seem to be interested in being well-rounded, because apparently it’s harder than it first appears to get Shaun to the movies once a week. Between their ordinary long and awkward hours, surgery or other resident duties running over, and Shaun’s quite particular taste in entertainment, it doesn’t happen again for more than a month.

In the meantime, Neil is not to be deterred.

“I’ll pick you up tomorrow at three,” Neil tells his favourite resident as he prepares to leave, keeping his voice low and an eye on the open door. “Assuming you don’t get caught up in anything in the next four hours.”

Shaun glances up from his journal long enough to ask, “Where are we going?”

“Golf,” Neil grins.

Shaun shows the smallest frown. “I’ve never played golf. It looks hard.”

“Trust me,” Neil says, “you can play this golf.”

He turns out to be even more right than he thought. Shaun is _excellent_ at mini-golf for someone who’s never played before. Of course, he lines up every shot precisely, probably calculating angles in his head, and they let at least three groups play through since he takes so long to do it, but even so he shouldn’t be this good.

“You are really good at this,” one of the employees tells Shaun, a young woman who’d been at the register earlier. “I’ve never seen you here before.”

“I’ve never been here before,” Shaun replies, smiling, which Neil knows is nothing to do with the conversation but because he’s pleased at his own skills. Neil feels happy just looking at him, kind of like a proud father, except really not, because Shaun is definitely not his kid. He’d seemed like a kid when they first met, all awkwardness and lack of social graces, despite his well-earned qualifications. That has definitely shifted though, particularly in the last few months as they’ve been spending a lot more time together – yeah, Neil would call it becoming friends – with Shaun’s rough edges smoothing out and even his general demeanour becoming calmer. Part of it, Neil knows, is the help he’s given Shaun to understand the world and interact with it. But part of it is Shaun just maturing in his own way, growing in confidence and, he thinks, starting to be a bit more open to doing things a little differently, even though it’s hard for him.

“Neil is better than me.” Neil starts paying attention again when he hears his name.

“Oh, is that right?” The girl smiles at Neil briefly, then back at Shaun.

Shaun nods. “Although he has had more practice, so I don’t think it’s a fair comparison.”

“Beginner’s luck,” Neil says to Shaun, smirking, and doesn’t mean it in the slightest. He thinks Shaun maybe knows he’s teasing, but it doesn’t really matter. Shaun laughs at him anyway.

Neil catches the girl looking between the two of them out of the corner of her eye. “So, will you bring him back for a rematch then, you think?”

“Absolutely,” Neil says, smiling, because Shaun looks totally happy with that idea.

The girl nods once. “Good. Have fun, you guys,” and then winks at Neil as she goes back to the register.

Neil looks at Shaun to see what he made of that, but Shaun is already lining up for his next shot. _That was weird_ , he thinks, but he shrugs it off, and instead begins to debate out loud whether or not it would be fair to exert some extra pressure on Shaun, maybe with some random nudges or making him putt at a ninety degree angle – all in the name of sharpening his newfound skills, of course.

Shaun blocks him out effectively and scores a hole in one.

* * * * *

“Hey, Shaun,” Claire greets him when he enters the break room. “Shouldn’t you grab some lunch? We’re operating in a half hour.”

Shaun holds up the Tupperware container. “I have lunch.”

Claire frowns at him. “Oh. I thought you always ate from the cafeteria.”

“Usually I do,” Shaun agrees. “But these are leftovers.” He waits for Dr Turner to finish using the microwave and then puts his lasagne in.

When it’s ready, he sits at a table next to Claire, who’s eating a bag lunch. “Trying to save money,” she sighs. “I totalled up my expenses last month and the result was scary.”

Shaun takes a bite of his lasagne. “That smells delicious,” Claire says, leaning over deliberately to inhale the scent. Shaun leans back in his chair and she says, “Sorry,” and sits back with a little smile. “What’d you put in it?”

“I didn’t make it,” Shaun says, realising just after saying it that now she’s going to ask-

“Who did? I want them to make me some.”

Shaun thinks she might be joking, but it’s hard to tell. That really isn’t the important part of this conversation, though.

“Um. My friend,” he says, after a desperate few seconds.

Claire frowns again. “Okay? Your friend Lea?”

There is no way out of this that isn’t the truth. Shaun sets his fork down and lowers his voice to the point where he’s only just not whispering. “No. Dr Melendez.”

His eyes alight on numerous points around the room while he waits for Claire to respond. When she does, he has no idea what it means.

“Ohhhh.” Claire picks up her sandwich again. Shaun looks at her and she’s smiling.

It seems like he could maybe just stop talking now and get away with it, but he feels like he needs to know. “Why are you smiling?”

This time she smiles right at him. “Dr Melendez is _making_ you lunch now. That’s cute.”

“He didn’t make me lunch,” Shaun corrects. “He made me dinner and there were leftovers so I’m having them for lunch.”

“That’s even cuter,” Claire grins.

Shaun sifts through the possible meanings and comes up with…nothing. “Why is that cute?”

“Because! You know. You’re in the stage of the relationship where he’s like…really taking care of you. I mean, he has been for a while anyway, but this is like a step up. Sending you with homemade food. That’s serious.”

“Why is it serious?”

Claire pauses at that. “I don’t know. I guess it’s…it shows he’s thinking about your future needs, not just what’s happening right at the time? It’s not – it’s not bad serious, though,” she clarifies, which is helpful. “It’s good. He’s being a good boyfriend.”

And again, Shaun’s lost. “Neil doesn’t have a girlfriend.” He realises he’s slipped up, using Neil’s first name at work, but at least Claire isn’t likely to mind. Morgan, on the other hand, would probably point it out at least three times afterwards.

Claire pulls a face. “Of course he doesn’t, Shaun, he – you can do those kind of things with your boyfriend, you know. It’s not just a heterosexual thing.”

Shaun looks down at his lasagne, which is getting cold, and mourns it. “I don’t understand what we’re talking about any more.”

After a long pause, Claire says, “Me either. Shaun, is – is Dr Melendez - _Neil_ \- is he your boyfriend?”

Shaun laughs. “No. He is not.”

Claire looks around the room before she replies, and Shaun follows her gaze. She seems to be checking out who else is around, but there aren’t many people here and Shaun doesn’t recognise those that are. “Are you sure?”

“He has not asked me to be his boyfriend and I have not asked him, so no. We are not boyfriends.”

“Okay…just because you haven’t put a label on it doesn’t mean you’re not dating. I mean, I thought you had been for a while.”

Shaun thinks about this. Surely he would know if he was dating someone? Then again, there are lots of things other people know that he doesn’t know…

“You think we’re dating?”

Claire’s looking confused now. “I thought you were, yeah, and you were just trying to keep it on the DL. But…I guess maybe not.”

“Why did you think we were?” Shaun picks his fork up again, realising he only has twenty three minutes until they’re meant to be in the O.R. with Dr Lim, and Neil will not be impressed if he finds out Shaun didn’t eat beforehand, especially when he went to the trouble to pack this up and bring it for him.

Claire, meanwhile, is ignoring her lunch entirely. “Okay, well – let’s think. There are signs people are dating. I mean, making you food or giving you food is definitely one, especially if that happens often. How often has that happened?”

Shaun thinks about it. “About four times a week.” He isn’t sure if it counts when Neil buys him something from the cafeteria and tells Shaun he owes him (although he never actually tries to collect the money, but Shaun tries to keep track of it and pay him back when he remembers) so he doesn’t count those times. Or when they’ve cooked together a few times, since that’s not Neil giving him food, exactly.

“Sign number one,” Claire says, definitively. “And how much time are you spending together? Outside work, I mean.”

Shaun glances at her, unsure if he’s still meant to try not to talk about this. Claire seems to kind of know already, but even so, confirming it might make things worse.

“Don’t worry, this is just between us,” Claire says, nudging his arm. Shaun moves it away and she says, “Sorry,” without her face changing.

Shaun knows he can trust her. “We see each other a lot.” A lot is a relative term, he knows, but then the time they actually have away from work is never fixed. He just knows that more often than not, if he has a day or more away from the hospital, and so does Neil (or sometimes when only one of them does but the other finishes at a reasonable time) they spend that time together. Shaun’s never had a best friend, but he thinks this might be what it’s like. Maybe that’s what Claire is confusing with dating.

“Okay, so frequent time together. What does he think about you?”

Shaun looks at her. “How would I know?”

“Well…has he told you?”

Shaun thinks about this before he replies. “He thinks I’m good at golf. I need to do more things that aren’t about medicine – have hobbies. He thinks I can bake pie very well – although he taught me so I don’t think that counts. He…thinks I talk too much about work. He thinks I’m pretty interesting though.”

He runs out of things to say, and looks at Claire, who’s smiling. “I think he cares about you.”

Shaun considers this and figures Claire might be right, but he couldn’t say so with any certainty.

“Do you care about him?” Claire asks.

“Yes,” says Shaun, without even thinking about it. _Then_ he thinks about it, and realises the answer is still yes. Part of him knew it before his conscious mind did.

“Hmm,” Claire says, still smiling. “Can I see your phone?”

Shaun hands it over, unsure what she’s doing, and unlocks it when asked. She goes to the messages app and taps on Neil’s name, which is right at the top. She scrolls through, but only pauses for a second or two here and there, so she isn’t reading most of it. She hands it back. Shaun puts it back in his pocket and realises his lasagne is now very cold. He doesn’t want to eat it, but needs must, so he shoves a forkful in his mouth and tries to chew and swallow quickly.

“You text each other a lot.” Shaun nods. “And mostly stuff that really doesn’t matter. That’s another sign.”

“Sometimes we don’t see each other for hours, or days. It’s hard to remember everything to tell him so I just text him when I think about stuff.”

Claire’s grinning now. “And…let’s see. What about the future? Do you think about that at all? I mean, spending time with him in the future.”

“He said we should go to Disneyland and ride Space Mountain in the winter,” Shaun says, unsure if that’s the kind of thing she means. “But I don’t think he was serious.”

“I don’t know,” Claire says, finally picking up her sandwich again and taking a bite, “I think he might’a been.”

After she swallows, she says, “So on the evidence, it definitely sounds like you’ve been dating. Although maybe neither of you knew it.” She frowns.

Something occurs to Shaun. “If we’re dating, shouldn’t we have kissed?”

“Oh. Well – not everybody does, but sure, most people do…do you want to, though? I mean, with your touching issues and things?”

“I think I would like to try it. With Neil,” he clarifies, just in case she gets the wrong idea.

She smiles. “Maybe you should tell him that.”

“Maybe,” Shaun says, feeling it’s going to need a lot more consideration. One of the reasons Claire is his friend is because she leaves it at that, and they just about get to finish their lunch before they go into surgery.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it! The final chapter of the most oblivious two surgeons you ever did see. I really appreciate you all sticking with this and letting me know you're on their side. It's been motivating through some really hard months. I hope I did them justice in this last part.
> 
> I know people have said they don't want this to be the end; truth be told I don't either because there is so much more I could do with them, but this is the natural end for this story. That said, I never say never. I have a habit of coming back to dabble in universes once or twice more, so we might see them again (because heck knows we won't see them in the same room on the damn show). But if I don't, I really hope you've enjoyed it, and thank you once again.

Shaun mulls over the dating hypothesis for a few days. Initially without meaning to, then intentionally once he realises he’s doing it, he studies Neil’s and his interactions through the lens of what Claire had said. He finds evidence to back up her theory almost every time they communicate (and a couple of times when they don’t), but he needs a control to make it meaningful.

Therefore, he looks for someone else to study, someone who’d fit into the category of ‘friend’. The obvious choice would be Claire, but since she was the one who pointed all the signs out, there could be bias there, Claire intentionally or unintentionally altering her reactions to differ from Neil’s.

Lea would be another good choice, except they haven’t hung out much recently. Some of the time they used to spend together has been taken up by Neil, without Shaun realising it, and then she got a new boyfriend and with one thing and another it’s been a while. Shaun can’t exactly ask her specifically to hang out just to test a theory, since that would create an artificial situation.

Dr Glassman is a friend, but Shaun puts him in that category only because there isn’t a more fitting one. He doesn’t feel like a friend in the same way Claire or Lea (or Neil?) do. He can’t imagine going to a bar or playing mini golf with him, unless it was Dr Glassman’s idea first and probably specifically to try to desensitize Shaun to the situation, rather than because they’d both enjoy it. Besides, he hasn’t wanted to talk or eat together or do anything much recently, too tired and angry from his treatments.

In the end, Shaun decides he can’t approach this entirely scientifically. It irks him, but he’s not left with a choice.

* * * * *

“I brought breakfast,” Neil says, holding up a bag of what is most likely pastries when Shaun opens the door. He’s still half-asleep, his 10pm finish being more like 2am, whereas Neil is immaculate and ready to work at a moment’s notice. Shaun turns and goes into the bathroom without responding, whilst Neil lets himself into the apartment. When he checks the time, he realises Neil will actually be starting work in under an hour.

“Audrey mentioned you guys finished late last night,” Neil says, handing Shaun some sliced fruit and a glass of water when he sits down at the table. He’s got a pastry for himself, something Shaun can’t identify.

Shaun rearranges his fruit into groups of roughly equal amounts of kiwi, apple and grapes. He catches sight of Neil’s smile and smiles back. Neil’s already told him he doesn’t understand why Shaun does that, and Shaun in turn has told him he doesn’t understand why Neil doesn’t. “When did you speak to Audrey?”

“She texted me this morning. Asked me to keep an eye on the patient.” He takes a sip of coffee. “Maybe I’ll bring her into surgery with me.”

“That would be very unhygienic.”

“Not if I scrub her in. Could be educational.”

Shaun is pretty sure Neil is joking, more so when he doesn’t keep talking about it. They lapse into silence as they eat.

Then Neil sighs, “I have to be in in forty minutes,” and Shaun mentally logs it as evidence (spending a lot of time together), then realises this is the first good opportunity he’s had to act on his decision.

“Claire thinks we’re dating.”

Neil raises both eyebrows. “She what?”

Shaun smiles; Neil rarely sounds inarticulate. “She thinks we’re boyfriends.”

“…with each other?”

Shaun grins. “Yes. With each other.”

There’s a pause of several seconds where Neil doesn’t really move, until he eventually says, “Huh.” Then he goes back to not moving. He’s staring at a spot on the wall beyond Shaun’s right arm.

“Are you okay?” Shaun asks, a little concerned when Neil doesn’t continue the conversation.

“Huh?” Neil’s eyes meet his again. “Oh, yeah.” He nods a little, in that kind of automatic way that people do when they haven’t really thought about the question.

“So what do you think?” Shaun presses, wanting Neil’s view on the matter.

Neil frowns a little. “Well, I think we’d know if we were dating, right?” He huffs a laugh. “I mean, I don’t know about you, but I tend to have that conversation with my partner before someone else.”

“Hmm,” says Shaun. “I thought that too, but Claire thinks we’ve been dating and we didn’t know it.”

“Well, Claire thinks a lot of things,” Neil says, which is both factually correct and doesn’t really make a lot of sense.

They lapse into silence again. Shaun finds it frustrating; he wants to know more about what Neil thinks, but Neil doesn’t seem to want to discuss it and he doesn’t quite know the questions he wants to ask. Not long after, Neil says, “Better get in early if I’m going to check on your patient,” and leaves, with an unfinished pastry on his plate.

Shaun stares at the door long after he’s left, thinking about the fact that he didn’t get to bring up the kissing, and now it’s not clear if he should. But he definitely still wants to.

* * * * *

It’s three days before Neil gets a chance to speak to Claire, during which time he ends up kind of avoiding Shaun, as much as you can avoid someone you’re working with and who texts you about fifteen times a day. Okay, not all of them are things that require answers - _They’ve started using a new detergent on the scrubs. It smells funny._ – but some are, and Neil finds himself giving responses which are most likely to shut down any further conversation.

He doesn’t even really know why he’s doing it. A part of him feels guilty because he knows it’s probably confusing Shaun (hell, it’s confusing him) but he feels like he needs to have it out with Claire before talking to Shaun again, at least about anything that isn’t necessary and professional.

“Dr Browne,” Neil says before she can leave with the others for rounds. “Can I speak to you for a minute?”

She hangs back as the others go, Shaun among them. Neil waits until the door is firmly closed.

“Can I ask why you felt it was appropriate to tell Dr Murphy you think he and I are dating?” Neil hadn’t actually realised he was angry until he spoke, not having thought too much about how he expected this conversation to go, just focusing on making sure it happened.

Claire opens her mouth and raises her eyebrows, like she’s poised to speak, but it takes a few seconds before she actually makes a sound. Her eyes slide away from him and back. “I didn’t realise you weren’t.”

“Well, we’re not,” Neil says shortly. He realises his arms are folded and that it’s a classic defensive position. He also realises unfolding them now would seem like he’s trying too hard to relax, so he keeps them there.

Claire’s eyebrows raise again, just a flicker this time. “Could’ve fooled me.”

“Dr Browne,” Neil says, “this is not an appropriate conversation to be having with your attending.”

“Well, in my defence, _sir_ ,” the stress on _sir_ is slight, but it’s noticeable, “you brought it up. If you say you’re not dating, fine. I didn’t put out an advertisement. But to anyone who actually knows both of you, that’s what it looks like.”

Neil has to think before he can reply. She’s right, he did bring it up, and now he just sounds as defensive as he was trying not to look. He’s not even sure what he’s feeling defensive _about_. He eventually settles for, “Why?” in the most casual tone he can manage, which isn’t very.

Claire lists off about a dozen of their recent interactions. He knows most of them she must have heard about from Shaun, since they happened outside of the hospital. Some of them, however, are very much within work time, and Neil feels a small stone in his stomach growing larger as she continues, along with the thought _to anyone who actually knows both of you, that’s what it looks like_.

Claire shrugs when she finishes. “Just so you know, he wants to kiss you. Or at least, he wants to try it.”

Neil decides that is too much information to handle on top of this and he is therefore going to ignore it completely. “Are you…do other people think this?” What he means is _are other people talking about this?_ but he can’t quite bring himself to say it for fear of what the answer might be.

“I don’t know,” Claire says, which is a tiny bit of a relief. “I haven’t heard anybody talk about it or anything. But that’s not to say they’re not thinking about it.”

After another pause, Neil begins to dismiss her when she interrupts him.

“Look, it’s none of my business what you do. But Shaun’s my friend, so if you’re not into him, you should tell him. Or – if you just don’t want to go there, for whatever reason.”

Neil frowns, but stops himself before he says, “Like the fact that I’m straight?” It’s the first thing that springs to mind, and yet he knows somehow that Claire will turn it into something it’s not.

Instead, he says, “Shaun hasn’t given me any indication that he wants to ‘go there’. And I’m not in the habit of telling all of my – everyone I meet that I don’t want to date them.”

It takes him aback when Claire seems angry in response. “Like I said, he wants to kiss you. But that’s not just out of nowhere. Shaun _isn’t_ everyone you meet. You care about him. I might be wrong as to how deep that goes, but it’s not fair to Shaun to pretend you don’t.”

There’s a beat, then Claire huffs, turns and leaves, crossing the room in one stride. Normally he’d pull her up on just leaving like that, like she’s decided the conversation is finished, but for once he’s just thankful because he doesn’t have a clue how to reply.

* * * * *

Over the next couple of days, Neil alternates any of the brain time that isn’t used either by work or meeting his immediate needs between trying to work out what the hell to do about Shaun, and trying to completely repress the issue altogether with increasingly poor attempts at distraction. Neither of these approaches proves constructive.

He realises he needs to do something else when Shaun asks him quietly, just as the lift doors close on the two of them and Neil is thinking he should’ve taken the stairs, “Did I do something wrong?”

Neil feels immediately awful. Shaun doesn’t sound hurt, he doesn’t look upset, he’s just presenting it as a neutral question but despite his callousness sometimes, Neil is in fact human and he knows how he’d be feeling if he asked that of someone, and he also knows that just because Shaun isn’t showing an emotion, it doesn’t mean he’s not feeling it. He can’t always name it, but often he feels things even deeper than most people, maybe _because_ he can’t name them and they end up building up inside him.

“No,” he sighs, first to break eye contact this time because he’s ashamed, but he gathers the courage to look up again. “I’m sorry, Shaun. You haven’t done anything wrong, I’m just – I’m going through some stuff right now and I need – I need some time on my own for a bit. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you that. I should have.”

It’s as honest as he can be without actually telling Shaun what’s been going through his head, because Shaun doesn’t need to know any of that. And Shaun, because he accepts people at face value and he’s wonderful, says, “Okay,” and nods and looks back at the doors.

When the lift stops Shaun leaves, but Neil ends up riding up and back down again even though that was his floor too, because he’s too busy realising that when he spoke, he put his arm on Shaun’s without meaning to. And Shaun didn’t even glance at it, and he didn’t pull away, and he didn’t tense in that way he often does when something disturbs his delicate sense of equilibrium. He just accepted it.

* * * * *

It takes Neil another day to steel himself enough to do what he needs to do. There are very, very few people in the world he would trust to share this kind of problem with. It’s just unfortunate that the only one who’s readily available and who’ll actually be the best at it, is the one who this will be most awkward with.

When he does finally manage to call her, she doesn’t answer. He spends the next forty minutes deliberating over sending a text saying, “Never mind,” so when she calls back he still has the phone in his hand. The ringtone makes him jump violently.

“Jessica,” he answers, breathing out on the word.

“Hey,” she replies, and he can hear the smile in her voice. “What’s up?”

“Uh…” He huffs a forced laugh. “I kinda need your advice.”

He can just make out odd noises in the background, like she’s moving around but nothing distinctive. “Legal advice, or something else?”

“Something else. Although…there may be a legal element to it. But – no, it’s not about that.”

“All right…” Jessica says. “Now I’m intrigued. So what’s the situation?”

It takes him long enough to find the words that Jessica prompts, “Neil?”

“Yeah,” he says. “Sorry, I’m just – okay, so you remember Murphy?”

“Shaun Murphy? Of course. Has something happened?”

“No,” he shakes his head, dimly noticing that he’s risen from the couch where this phone call started, and he’s now pacing around his apartment. “Nothing’s happened. Well, not yet. Uh…”

Jessica gives him the space, now she knows he’s just looking for the words. It’s unusual for Neil to be struggling like this – second time in a week, no less – but she’s heard him like this before. It’s why he trusts her with it.

“We’ve been spending a lot of time together recently,” Neil manages, realising as he says it how it already sounds, “and Claire – Dr Browne – she told him that – and then she told me, I guess – well, she said that, it looks like we’re dating.”

There’s a long pause before Jessica asks, “Well, are you?”

“No!” Neil replies, but it sounds more desperate than it has any right to.

“So…what’s your problem?” Jessica’s got that tone which suggests she already knows what his problem is, but she’s going to make him come out and say it.

“Apparently he wants to kiss me,” Neil grinds out.

Jessica sounds unconcerned. “So just tell him you’re not interested.” There’s a pause, then her tone changes entirely. “Unless you are.”

She sounds almost fascinated, which Neil supposes is better than disgusted, but either way he didn’t need her to have that thought. And yet he totally did, because that’s why he called her. She was always better at untangling his own feelings than he was.

Neil doesn’t know what to say, so he lets her continue the conversation. “Neil, you _like_ him.” It sounds altogether both juvenile and serious, like on the one hand they’re talking about a little crush he has, and on the other hand they’re deconstructing his sexuality.

“He’s my resident,” Neil replies, because that’s an easier barrier to use. “Even if I wanted to, I can’t go around kissing my residents.” He has a brief, traumatising mental image of doing just that, with all of them, and vows never to use those words in the same sentence again.

“Well, I’m not saying you’re going to move in together. There might not even be a spark. Have you actually spoken to him about this, or has this all come from Claire?” Neil’s silence is enough and he knows Jess is rolling her eyes when she says, “You’re an idiot. Why not talk to him before you worry about anything else?”

He’s left with no option but to go there. “Jess…I’m not gay.”

“I hope not,” Jessica replies instantly, “otherwise you must’ve been using an awful lot of Viagra during our relationship.”

He laughs out of shock more than anything.

“You don’t have to be gay to like a man, Neil. I know you can appreciate a good body.”

He ignores the meaningful tone and the memories of lying on beautiful beaches on vacation or sitting under parasols outside cafes, pointing out to one another people you’d let them sleep with, if they came up and asked. He’d always thought it was a game.

“Shaun’s hardly Mr Universe.” It feels unfair to disparage Shaun like that, but it’s the point. He isn’t running over all these thoughts a thousand times in his head because he thinks Shaun’s unnaturally attractive. It’s something else.

“So what is he to you?” Jessica asks, going right for the jugular.

Neil has to think before he answers. Up until the other day when he’d almost said to Claire that Shaun was his friend, biting it back because even that was too much of an admission, he hasn’t let himself categorise Shaun. Shaun has just been the resident who he cooks for several times a week and who he goes out to have fun with and who…his life sort of accidentally revolves around.

“He’s my friend,” he says eventually, quietly, because even he knows he’s lacking conviction in that statement.

Jess takes a few moments before she replies. “If he were just your friend – and you were happy to leave it at that – we wouldn’t be having this conversation. You have feelings for him, Neil. That’s okay.”

Neil exhales a long, shaky breath. He needed her to say it before he could think it. The feelings were there, clearly, but he’s been too scared to put them into words.

“You said he wants to kiss you, right?”

“Mmhmm.”

Her tone is gentle still. “So why not just try it? Doesn’t mean you have to sign up to march in the Pride parade or declare a conflict of interest with Andrews. Just…see how it goes?”

By the time Neil puts the phone down fifteen minutes later, he feels like he’s been rearranged. But he thinks it’s in a good way.

* * * * *

Shaun gets out of an Uber at Neil’s apartment with his stomach in knots. Neil told him he hadn’t done anything wrong, but he’s woken him up in the middle of the night and asked him to come over. He hasn’t offered to come pick him up and he hasn’t said anything about why he wants Shaun to come over. Shaun knows Neil has just finished work, and he knows Neil knows he left hours ago because they passed in the atrium on his way out, so whatever Neil wants must be important.

Each step closer to the apartment door feels harder, like his legs are getting heavier. Yet despite the fact that Neil is the reason why he’s so worried, as soon as Neil opens the door and says, “Hey,” quite a lot of that tension in Shaun’s stomach dissipates. He smiles without meaning to.

Neil smiles back, but it doesn’t look right. He turns and heads for the living room, leaving Shaun to follow. Shaun hovers by the doorway, waiting for Neil to gesture vaguely at the couch before he sits down.

Shaun waits for Neil to start the conversation, but he doesn’t. The tension builds quickly inside him until he blurts, “Why did you call me here?”

Neil is sitting in an armchair kitty corner to the couch, instead of on the other end of it like he usually is. He’s straight backed, sort of perched on the edge rather than relaxed into it, and his hands are clasped in his lap, but not still. Shaun has never seen him like this.

“I owe you…a conversation,” Neil says.

Shaun tries to work that out and can’t. “I don’t think you can owe someone a conversation.”

Neil smiles again, fleetingly. “You can. I do, because I have been avoiding talking to you about something for several days now and that wasn’t fair.”

“Oh,” Shaun says.

When several moments pass and Neil doesn’t say anything more, Shaun asks, “Do you want to talk about movies?” He knows Neil likes that, especially when there’s one they’ve both seen; he likes to work through them scene by scene and compare their opinions. If they don’t match it’s not a fight, more like a debate that fires him up, but excited rather than angry. Shaun doesn’t understand the importance, but he likes that Neil likes it.

Neil doesn’t take that avenue, though. Instead, he shakes his head, takes a deep breath and says, “I have feelings for you.” Before Shaun can process that, he frowns a little and adds, “Do you know what that means?”

Shaun nods slowly, because he does but it takes him a little while to put it into words. “You…like me more than a friend.”

“Yeah.” Neil smiles and this time it’s a real one. “I think I do.”

Something clicks in Shaun’s mind. “Is that why Claire thought we were dating? Did you tell her that?”

“No,” Neil shakes his head, “I didn’t tell her. But I didn’t have to. She’s perceptive. She knew before I did.”

Shaun frowns as he tries to figure how that’s possible, but he doesn’t get a chance to before Neil’s talking again. “Shaun.” Shaun meets his eyes. “Can I kiss you?”

Shaun hadn’t realised the knots had gone; they come back now, but they tie and untie and re-tie like there’s a second heart beating in his stomach, faster than the first. He nods, because this is terrifying but he wants it, and rises when Neil does. He stays still as Neil takes the step forward to come into his personal space, and inhales Neil’s cologne, faint after a long day at work but still barely there. Normally Shaun hates colognes and perfumes and hairsprays, they’re just another assault on his already overstimulated senses, but Neil’s smells different. It’s familiar and safe.

Neil looks him in the eyes briefly as he leans forward, then drops his gaze to Shaun’s lips. Shaun closes his eyes, partly because that’s what everyone always does, and partly because it just feels like the thing to do. He trusts Neil to get it right even if Shaun’s own eyes are closed.

Neil’s lips press against his, just barely at first, then a little harder. It’s the only place they’re touching but Shaun can smell him and hear him, a slight inhale through his nose and a whisper as the fabric of his shirt moves against itself and it’s like he’s everywhere all at once and Shaun is absolutely, completely fine with that. Neil moves his lips in a way that Shaun can’t really describe because he’s too busy figuratively drowning in him, and then Neil pulls back.

Shaun breathes in and takes a second before he opens his eyes. He clasps his hands together to resituate himself in space. Neil is still very close, and watching him.

“Did you like it?” Neil asks.

“I did,” Shaun nods. “Did you like it?”

Neil takes a half-step back and reaches up a hand to the back of his neck before it drops back down. “Do you ever…have you ever thought about me…in a sexual way?” He rushes the last few words together, so it takes a half-second longer to parse them.

“I have done,” Shaun says, knowing this is probably impolite but it would be worse to lie, so he adds honestly, “but it seemed rude without your consent. So I stopped.”

Neil laughs. And laughs. And keeps laughing. Shaun has no idea what’s funny, but he ends up laughing too, at Neil laughing, which only makes Neil laugh more. Eventually the laughter subsides, with the occasional giggles they can’t help but let out, by which time they’re both sitting down again. This time though Neil has joined him on the couch, next to him instead of a seat apart.

“How would you feel,” Neil asks when they’ve got their breath back, “if we were to actually try dating? You know, when we both know that’s what it is.”

Shaun smiles. “I would like that. Would we get to kiss again?”

“We can kiss a lot more, if you want.” Neil grins at him, Shaun nods back, then Neil kisses him again. It’s just as good as the first time.

When they stop, Neil’s still smiling, but it drops quickly. “I will have to transfer you to another attending.”

“What?” Shaun does not like the sound of that. “I don’t want another attending.”

“I know,” Neil says, putting his hand out, “but we can’t keep this a secret – hell, it wasn’t a secret even before it was a thing – and it’ll count as a conflict of interest. But don’t worry. I’m pretty sure I can talk Audrey into taking you on.”

Shaun considers this. It’s not great, but if it’s the only way, it’s not terrible. “Dr Lim is a good doctor.”

“She’s a great doctor, actually, but don’t tell her I said that.” Neil smiles and Shaun’s almost certain he’s joking.

Something occurs to Shaun; a question he’s wanted to ask Neil for a while now, but hasn’t felt he was allowed to. With the new status of their relationship, though, he feels like it might be okay. “Would you…hug me?”

“Sure,” Neil says. They both shuffle a little so they’re more at angles, facing one another, then Neil leans forward and puts his arms around Shaun, one over his shoulder and one under the other arm. Shaun does the same.

It feels nice, but – “Can you hug harder?” Shaun asks quietly. Without pausing, Neil squeezes, until it’s just short of painful. He holds the tension and Shaun feels so much better than he has in a long time.

Claire was definitely right. Neil cares about him.


End file.
